The Pant Project’s Sukita Tapadia on why reaching the right audience is more important than going viral

In the daily drama of dressing, some garments are born headliners, others are supporting cast, and then there are the silent workhorses. For many a man, trousers have long been the latter—a perfunctory choice, an afterthought overshadowed by the statement shirt or the eye-catching sneakers. But what if these foundational garments, the unsung heroes holding an outfit together, decided it was their turn for a curtain call? This is precisely the wardrobe revamp being stitched together by The Pant Project, and at the helm of its narrative is CMO Sukita Tapadia.

In a market often fixated on fleeting trends, The Pant Project has chosen to dig its heels into a singular, focused ambition: to make pants the protagonist. It’s a bold gambit—to take what’s often considered a utilitarian purchase and elevate it to a conscious choice, a cornerstone of personal style and, crucially, comfort. This isn't just about selling legwear; it's about reframing perception, one well-fitted pair at a time.

With five years under its belt and a significant Series A funding round to fuel its ambitions, the brand is moving beyond its early bootstrapped days of calculated performance marketing. Tapadia, who joined the company a year ago, steps into this evolving landscape tasked with weaving a stronger brand persona and expanding its share of the "wardrobe real estate." In this candid conversation, Tapadia pulls back the curtain on The Pant Project's marketing journey, from viral campaigns that played on a famous surname to the strategic nuts and bolts of thriving in the challenging D2C space. She discusses the art of making comfort a compelling narrative, the science behind their content strategy, and the mission to ensure that when men think of pants, they think of The Pant Project—not as an afterthought, but as the main event.

Edited excerpts:

Can you walk us through the key milestones of your marketing journey since launch—what were the early wins, and how has your approach matured over time?

It’s been about five years since the brand launched. In the early days, we were bootstrapped, so every marketing effort was very calculated—we had to be sure of the returns. From the beginning, we understood that being a D2C brand meant heavy reliance on performance marketing. But even then, we were mindful of building a pull factor for the brand—something beyond ads.

About two and a half years ago, we launched a campaign featuring Rishabh Pant, playing off the “Pant” wordplay. It struck a chord and became one of our biggest early moves. I joined the company about a year ago, and that’s when we really began defining our brand persona, understanding our target audience, and shaping how we communicate with them.

Around the same time, we raised our Series A round, which gave us the resources to focus more intentionally on brand marketing, social strategy, and content as growth drivers. When the revenue stakes grow post-Series A, your marketing has to mature.

At our core, we’re a pant specialist. If you think about menswear, most men pay attention to their shoes or shirts—but pants are often an afterthought. That became our anchor: making pants the focal point of the outfit and conversation. Our three-year goal is simple—when a guy thinks about pants, he should think about the Pant Project.

One insight that emerged from talking to customers is that men care deeply about comfort. So now, every piece of content, every campaign, every product representation is built around the idea of comfort. Men tend to be brand loyalists—especially when it comes to pants, which are technical and tricky to get right. Once they find a brand they like, they stick with it.

Because we offer custom-made pants, we can deliver comfort tailored to individual fit and style. This defines our messaging and product experience.

Which marketing campaigns do you consider the most impactful or defining for The Pant Project, and what made them stand out in terms of concept and reception?

Aside from the Rishabh Pant campaign, one standout has been the Tug of War campaign. It centered on our Power Stretch Pants, which have a four-way stretch and a unique knit fabric. One variant, “Bangalore Black,” accounts for 60% of our sales in that line. We played on the idea that stretch equals comfort and positioned ourselves as offering the most stretchable, and therefore most comfortable, pants in the country.

The Tug of War film showed two kids playing in a park, then transitioned to them pulling at our pants in a game of tug of war. The hook was compelling, and the campaign went viral. But we didn’t stop at digital—we took it to the streets with influencers running live tug of war contests, extending the campaign’s shelf life.

We repeat this often because we want to own that narrative—“most stretchable, most comfortable pants.” We’ve even run live tug-of-war events at our stores and in multi-brand retail outlets.

Another notable campaign was Indian Pant Liberation. It encouraged people to demand freedom from ill-fitting pants. We staged a mock protest during a Mumbai vs. CSK match day, with stilt walkers wearing exaggeratedly long pants to draw attention. The stunt created massive recall, especially since it happened right outside one of our key stores during the Mumbai Marathon.

What are some of the biggest opportunities and challenges you’ve faced as a D2C brand in the apparel space?

Like most D2C brands, our biggest challenge is dependency on ad platforms. CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) have become unsustainable. To reduce this reliance, we’ve invested heavily in creating organic, viral content—4 to 5 unique pieces every week. Content is what fuels brand pull and keeps costs down.

We also obsess over the customer journey. As a custom-made brand, we need detailed inputs from the customer—waist, inseam, preferences—which adds friction. We address this through education and a seamless UI/UX. For instance, if our website load time exceeds 4–5 seconds, we see a 70% drop in conversion. So we work on keeping it under 2 seconds.

Another challenge is deciding which marketplaces to partner with. Do they add incremental revenue or cannibalize our D2C sales? These are daily strategic decisions.

With content that appeals to both professionals and casual wearers, it's clear the brand serves varied audience groups. How do you segment your audience—whether by lifestyle, demographics, or shopping behaviour—and how does this inform the type of content you create?

Broadly, we don’t position ourselves as a Gen Z brand. We’re a classic, mass-premium brand—aspirational but accessible. Our ready-to-wear products are priced around ₹2,000, and custom-made ones around ₹3,500. That pricing reflects our positioning.

We cater to younger and older millennials for ready-to-wear, and people 40+ for custom. The latter group is more particular—about fit, creases, monograms. But both segments value comfort and quality.

We’ve also expanded into categories that help attract younger audiences. For instance, we recently launched Korean Pintuck Pants, which appeal to trend-sensitive buyers.

Our top cities are the usual metros—Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad—but we’re also seeing growth in business hubs like Indore and Rajkot. We’ve strategically opened stores in the South, where pant-wearing culture is stronger.

What’s your overarching social media strategy, and how do platforms like Instagram fit into your broader marketing funnel?

Our guiding principle is that we’re a mass-premium brand. So while our content is aspirational, it must remain accessible. We’re not a luxury label.

Instagram is tricky—it rewards trendy, Gen Z content. But our audience is mostly millennials. So we prioritize relevance over virality. If the content doesn’t reach the right audience, what’s the point of it going viral?

We’re very deliberate with our visuals and tone. We focus on aspirational imagery that appeals to people aged 27 and above. Our humour is cheeky and witty—not slapstick. For example, the Tug of War campaign was playful but classy. We recently launched Seersucker Pants, which are perfect for vacations or brunch. Since they’re priced at ₹3,500, we shot that campaign on a yacht to reflect aspirational living.

Everything—from our campaigns to our product photography—is crafted with our core audience in mind. It’s all about striking that balance between aspiration and authenticity.

Your Instagram presence mixes light-hearted, relatable themes with fashion—especially in casual lifestyle shots. How intentionally do you incorporate humor and cultural references into your content? And how do you balance being trendy while staying on-brand?

That’s a great question—one we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about. We've recently taken concrete steps in this direction. When you're managing a brand account, there are so many guardrails: “We can post this,” “We can’t post that,” “This might break the grid,” and so on. You often get stuck in those loops.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Pant Project (@thepantproject)

Our social media team is entirely Gen Z, and that was a conscious decision. I genuinely believe no one understands the platform better than Gen Z. They live and breathe it. We also realised that to truly push creative boundaries, we needed to look at brands doing exceptional content work. One international example is True Classic, a T-shirt brand with a standout content strategy. In India, there are also a few brands we closely follow.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Pant Project (@thepantproject)

So, to break out of that loop, we recently decided to split our content strategy into two separate Instagram accounts:

1. Brand Account (The Pant Project) – This will host all our campaigns, products, and brand aesthetics.
   

2. Community Account – This is where we’ll experiment freely with content formats, humor, wit, cultural commentary, and everything in between.
   

The idea is to keep the product at the center while allowing the second account to explore what makes our audience connect with us emotionally and culturally. We're aiming for content that makes people think, “If I’m wearing pants, it has to be The Pant Project.”

There’s a mix of reels, stills, and quote cards—how do you choose which format works best for each story or product? Are certain formats consistently driving higher engagement?

We’re very aggressive with video, especially Reels. I’d say around 90% of our content is video-based—micro, mini, or even longer-form Reels. It’s how our team is structured, and it’s what resonates. While we’ve done high-quality carousels and static posts, they haven’t worked as well for us.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Pant Project (@thepantproject)

One unique thing we do is send out Wednesday newsletters—long-form written pieces (around 1500 words) on quirky yet relatable topics like: “Why Indians Overpack”, “Why We Hoard Old Clothes”, “Why Packing Gives Us Anxiety”. 

These have been incredibly popular and have informed some of our best-performing video narratives. For example, our “suitcase video”—rooted in the blog post on overpacking—resonated because it captured a familiar struggle, but with humor and relatability.

Have you observed any specific format or tone that consistently drives engagement?

Absolutely. The less produced the content is, the better it performs. Spontaneity and authenticity matter more than polish. We once posted a random video of our founder Udit Toshniwal visiting the Sabyasachi store. It was shot casually on a phone. He simply said something like, “Women have Sabyasachi, men have The Pant Project,” and it just took off. It had nothing fancy—just humor, relevance, and honesty.

So now, our cue to the team is: capture real people, real moments. Behind-the-scenes, campaign prep, street interviews—those raw formats consistently outperform highly produced pieces.

Fashion marketing is evolving—more personalisation, more authenticity. Your brand leans into Made in India and fit-focused messaging. What trends are you seeing, and how is The Pant Project positioned to lead?

We’ve been fortunate because we’re not a fashion-forward brand. We don’t chase trends for the sake of it. What we sell are classics—well-fitted formal pants, comfy stretchable jeans, and everyday trousers. These are essential items, not seasonal.

Our positioning is clear: we want to own the 80% share of a man's wardrobe—the basics. That makes us timeless, not trendy. However, we do experiment. For example, we observe the popularity of baggy fits and Korean-style pants and then launch capsule collections. If those resonate, we integrate them into our classics—always with our twist.

And we can do this because we come from a strong lineage. Our founders, Dhruv Toshniwal and Udit Toshniwal, are part of Banswara Syntex, a 50-year-old textile company that supplies to global brands. So we get trend data from the source—what top Japanese brands are planning for Fall ’26, for instance. We use those insights to adapt products for our market.

Take our Korean Pintuck Pants. We didn’t just copy the trend—we added our signature fit and stretch. It became a bestseller. Similarly, all our pants, regardless of trend, feature extreme stretch—our core USP. Even our jeans are called Pro Stretch Jeans for that reason.

Your recent “Into the Woods” campaign hints at a broader lifestyle positioning. What are your short-term and long-term marketing goals?

Short term, we’re staying true to our core: great pants. That’s our niche, and we want to dominate it. Even when we do lifestyle campaigns like Into the Light, the product is still central. That shoot, by the way, was in Landour—a hidden gem we discovered for its aesthetic value. It helped communicate the elevated feel of our Merino wool trousers, which retail between ₹5,000–₹7,000.

We structure our products—and marketing—into two buckets:

1. Everyday Essentials – Power stretch pants, jeans, daily wear.
   

2. Elevated Line – Merino wool pants, beach seersucker pants, and now a Linen-Sorona blend launching soon. Sorona makes linen wearable, durable, and low-maintenance.
   

This balance—between classic utility and aspirational styling—is how we build both revenue and brand equity.

Finally, how has the role of the CMO changed over the years?

It’s changed dramatically. Earlier, CMOs were seen as cost centers—they’d present a budget and ask for brand marketing spend without direct attribution. That’s no longer enough.

I started my career in sales, which taught me one thing: the real power lies with those who bring in revenue. So when I transitioned into marketing, I made a conscious decision to own revenue.

At The Pant Project, I’m not just the CMO—I also head D2C and own the e-commerce P&L. That means I oversee performance spends and ensure they drive measurable revenue. This dual role is becoming more common and more essential, especially in D2C.

Marketing today isn't about isolated metrics—it’s about the entire funnel. Switch off Meta ads for a week, and your offline footfall drops. So CMOs now must impact:

• Store footfall
  

• Marketplace search volumes
  

• Brand perception
  

• AND direct revenue
  

In short, modern CMOs need P&L responsibility. That’s how you drive efficiency and scale.