A purple cart, a sewing machine, and an idea borrowed from North India’s street-corner tailors. Fix My Fit is changing the way Kochi treats its clothes.
There is a purple cart parked near DD Platinum Gate at Kathrikadavu in Kochi. It is hard to miss. Walk up to it and you will find a tailor at work, a stitching unit humming, and a queue of people holding clothes they want fixed, not thrown away.
The cart belongs to Fix My Fit, a clothing alteration startup that has been open for barely six weeks. In that time, it has been pulling in at least 50 customers a day from across the city.
The person behind it is Sonali Thakur, a fashion designer and nutritionist who moved from Jharkhand to Kerala over 15 years ago, fell in love with the state, and eventually started noticing a gap that nobody else seemed to be filling.
The Gap Nobody Talked About
If you have ever lived in Delhi, Lucknow, or most North Indian cities, you know the masterji. He sits at a street corner with a sewing machine, charges you next to nothing, and fixes your hem while you wait. The whole thing takes ten minutes. In Kerala, that does not really exist.
Sonali noticed this years ago but it only clicked as a business idea when she was winding down her earlier venture, Tutu Mania, a children’s clothing store that made customised theme-based outfits for kids and parents. She had started the store after the birth of her daughter, making dresses for her at first, then expanding into a full operation.
During Covid, Tutu Mania took an unexpected turn. Sonali began designing cloth masks for children with animal and superhero patterns. The idea was simple: make masks fun enough that children actually wanted to wear them. It worked. Orders poured in from across India.
When the pandemic ended, the mask business wound down with it. Sonali explored wholesale for a while, but it did not feel like the right fit. She shut Tutu Mania gradually, kept her tailoring team, and started thinking seriously about what she wanted to build next.
The alteration idea kept coming back to her. Kerala’s demand for sustainable fashion was growing. People were increasingly looking at keeping clothes longer rather than replacing them. But the infrastructure to do that quickly and conveniently was almost non-existent in the state.
The Cart Model
Fix My Fit opened its first cart at Kathrikadavu about six weeks ago. The setup is compact but complete: a trained tailor, a full stitching unit, and support staff all operate out of the same purple vehicle.
The hours are 10am to 7pm. Some jobs are done in under ten minutes, right there while the customer waits. Others take longer but are typically handled the same day.
The services cover a wide range: taking in or letting out clothes, darning, replacing a frayed collar, changing a neckline or sleeve pattern, and design-level alterations for customers who want something more involved. The cart also offers one-day stitching.
For customers who cannot make it in person, Fix My Fit runs a pick-up and drop facility. You fill out a Google form, send your alteration requirements over WhatsApp or call, and the team handles the rest. Home tailor visits are also available on request.
Building a Team, One Stitch at a Time
Sonali currently runs Fix My Fit with a team of fifteen people including tailors, staff, and delivery assistants. But the part of the operation she is most deliberate about is one that does not always make it into startup conversations.
She is building a network of women tailors who work from home.
“There are a number of women who are good at tailoring, but may not be in a position to work at a centre. This would be a great way to generate employment for skilled women,” says Sonali. She is currently training five women for the role, creating flexible work for people who have the craft but not the commute.
What Comes Next
The response, Sonali says, has been better than she expected. The customer base has been roughly equal across men and women, which she calls encouraging.
The immediate plan is to launch two more carts, one in Kakkanad and one in Thevara, before expanding to other cities. She is also building an app that will make booking alterations, scheduling pick-ups, and requesting home tailor visits more seamless.
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