Early-stage fashion brands rarely fail because of one visible cost. They lose time, leverage and momentum through delayed decisions, unclear planning and collections created without a commercial purpose. The most expensive thing in a business often has no invoice - but it shapes everything that follows.

We explored the surprising parallels between strategy at the Mahjong table and strategy in fashion and the insights might change the way you think about business.

A few months ago, I walked through an exhibition that stayed with me for a long time. Ticket, Tika, Chaap at the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) in Bengaluru ran through late 2025. I work in textiles, and it was the kind of show that left a mark. What drew me in were the labels. Small, vivid, impossibly detailed, stuck once upon a time onto bolts of textiles and sent out into bazaars across India and the world. Walking through the exhibition, I realised that they were so much more than...