How Kusha Kapila Built a Rs 150 Crore D2C Empire in Just 8 Months

Kusha Kapila was born on September 19, 1989, in Delhi, into a Punjabi middle-class family in Pitampura. Her father Rakesh Kapila worked in a private firm. Her mother Rita Kapila was a homemaker whose unfiltered, quick-witted humour Kusha has credited in multiple interviews as the direct foundation of her own comedic voice. In one of her more personal Instagram posts, she described her family spending the first fifteen years of her life sharing a single room.

She completed her schooling in South Delhi, earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, and was active in theatre and street plays during college. After graduating, she enrolled at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi and completed a course in Fashion Design. The combination gave her a trained eye for cultural signals, an ability to write, and an instinct for aesthetics that most people in either field do not carry separately.

She initially wanted to become a journalist. She has cited war reporters like Barkha Dutt as an early inspiration. That specific path did not materialise, but the instinct behind it did: to observe, to document, to communicate what others walk past without noticing. That instinct became the engine of everything she later built.

The Years Before Anyone Was Watching

After NIFT, Kusha’s early career moved through roles that looked like detours but were preparation. She started with a three-month merchandise internship at Bhartiya International, worked as a fashion correspondent at Apparel Online in 2013, and joined Razorfish Neev in May 2014 as a copywriter, moving from fashion writing into digital advertising.

In 2016, she joined Times Internet as a fashion editor at iDiva, one of India’s largest digital women’s lifestyle platforms. She was hired to write and edit content. What nobody anticipated was what would happen when they handed her a camera.

Billi Maasi and What Came After

At iDiva, Kusha Kapila started making short video sketches for the platform’s social media pages alongside her colleague Dolly Singh. The character Billi Maasi came from a real person she encountered at a party in Chattarpur Farms, someone so precisely of a certain South Delhi social type that she seemed almost written rather than observed. The videos went viral not because of production value but because of specificity. The language, the cadence, the cultural detail were rendered so precisely that people who knew that world recognised it and people who had never visited it recognised someone they knew.

By 2018 and 2019, she had left iDiva, gone fully independent, and was treating her creative output as a business rather than a platform asset. She negotiated her own brand deals, managed her own production, and built a social media following that crossed 4 million on Instagram. That audience, and what she understood about it, became the foundation of her next chapter.

Her acting career grew in parallel. She made her OTT debut in Ghost Stories on Netflix in 2020, appeared in Masaba Masaba on Netflix and Dehati Ladke on Amazon Mini TV in 2023, and her film credits include Plan A Plan B, Selfiee alongside Akshay Kumar and Emraan Hashmi, Sukhee alongside Shilpa Shetty, and Thank You for Coming, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.

In 2025, she starred in the short film Vyarth to critical appreciation. She also appeared as a judge and guest on Comicstaan and LOL: Hasse Toh Phasse.

The Personal Chapter She Did Not Script

In 2017, Kusha Kapila married Zorawar Singh Ahluwalia, a digital creator and entrepreneur. In June 2023, they announced their separation through a joint statement. Kusha has spoken in interviews about navigating that publicly while maintaining her output as a creator and actively building a business. She relocated from Delhi to Mumbai.

She has also spoken openly about her health. After her mother enrolled her in a gym, she lost 20 to 22 kg through strength training and running. What she did not share immediately was what it cost: she was later diagnosed with abdominal tuberculosis, which she traced to extreme calorie deficiency during her early weight loss phase. She disclosed this on YouTube and has since been vocal on sustainable fitness and body positivity over appearance-driven goals.

That experience, living through body image pressure publicly while building a community of women sharing the same frustrations with her directly, was not separate from the business she went on to build. It was the research.

The Gap She Was Too Hot to Ignore

The problem with shapewear in India was one Kusha had felt personally and heard about constantly from her audience: most products available in the country were built for a different climate and a different body.

Traditional shapewear sold in India leaned heavily on polyester, a synthetic material that traps heat, restricts airflow, and causes discomfort during extended wear. In South Asian climates, where summers are long and humid and wearing shapewear under a saree or a bodycon outfit for hours at a stretch is common, polyester-heavy shapewear created real problems: heat buildup, sweating, chafing, roll-downs at the waistband, and compression so firm it limited movement. Western brands products were designed for Western body types, Western climates, and Western price points. Local alternatives existed but had not addressed the material or fit problems at a premium quality level.

Co-founder Vimarsh Razdan, who brought operational and fashion industry experience to the table, confirmed this in early interviews:

“I couldn’t initially understand the pain points, why a woman needs more cushioning, more seamlessness. Kusha was the first one to introduce it to me.”

Their research took the founding team to Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Germany, and other markets where they studied materials and manufacturing processes to understand what actually made shapewear work. They went through nearly two years of research and 60 product iterations before arriving at a range they believed was ready.

The Technical Answer: Ditching Polyester for Sensil

The product decisions Underneat made were deliberate and specific.

Rather than using conventional polyester found in most mass-market shapewear in India, Underneat built its range on Sensil, a German-engineered, patented yarn technology. Sensil is a premium nylon yarn known for its moisture-wicking properties, soft-touch feel, four-way stretch, breathability, and quick-drying performance.

In Vimarsh Razdan’s words:

“Unlike most Indian shapewear, which often contains polyester that traps heat and causes discomfort, our products are entirely polyester-free. Instead, we rely on moisture-wicking, soft-touch yarns enhanced with Sensil technology, a patented innovation that improves airflow, durability, and comfort.”

The brand launched with 20 SKUs across shaping shorts, bodysuits, backless styles, and related innerwear. All products are size-inclusive, with neutral colourways and an antibacterial crotch lining. The climate-specific design is explicit in the brand’s communication.

The Launch: No Ads, Just Honesty

Before Underneat opened for a single order, Kusha ran a month-long content campaign across her social channels titled “What Are You Wearing Under?” The campaign was entirely organic: no paid media, no corporate launch event, no press release. It consisted of episodic content where Kusha Kapila addressed real, everyday shapewear struggles with the same unfiltered humour that had built her audience in the first place.

The campaign generated organic engagement at a scale that paid media would not typically produce for a new brand, building community trust and product curiosity before a single SKU was live for sale. By the time Underneat launched in April 2025, it already had a waitlist.

The brand launched in Gurugram, selling shapewear, innerwear, and related accessories positioned as mass-premium.

The Numbers That Followed

Within 8 months of the April 2025 launch, Underneat had crossed Rs 150 crore in annual run rate and achieved EBITDA positivity. In November 2025 alone, the brand recorded Rs 12 crore in GMV. Its customer community crossed 2,00,000 members.

The funding journey tracked the growth. The seed round of $1 million, co-led by Fireside Ventures and Ghazal Alagh, arrived ahead of the April launch to build inventory, technology, and logistics infrastructure. In December 2025, 8 months after the brand opened, Underneat closed a $6 million Pre-Series A led by Fireside Ventures, with Ghazal Alagh continuing as an existing investor.

Awards, Recognition, and the Creator Business

Alongside Underneat, Kusha’s creator and media business has continued at pace. She has over 4.3 million Instagram followers as of 2026, commands upward of Rs 2 lakh per sponsored post, and has maintained a brand collaboration roster across fashion, beauty, personal care, and lifestyle.

She has been featured on the covers of Harper’s Bazaar India in 2019, HT Brunch in 2021, and Cosmopolitan India in 2022. GQ India named her among its 50 Most Influential Young Indians in 2024.

She received the Digital Creator of the Year award at HT India’s Most Stylish Awards in 2019 and the Most Stylish Content Creator award at the same event in 2023. She received a Filmfare OTT Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in 2023, and was named in Forbes India’s W-Power List and 30 Under 30 for Digital Content Creation in 2022.

Net Worth

Kusha Kapila’s net worth is estimated at approximately Rs 20 to Rs 30 crore as of 2026, across sources, drawn from brand collaborations, acting fees, hosting and reality show appearances, and her equity stake in Underneat.

Underneat is expanding operations using the Pre-Series A capital, scaling distribution across Indian cities and continuing to build its community of over 2,00,000 customers. At 36, she is building across more formats simultaneously than most people attempt across an entire career.

[Disclaimer: The information published in this article reflects publicly available details about Kusha Kapila and Underneat as of the date of publication. If you find any information that is incorrect or outdated, please write to us and we will review and correct it promptly.]