First Indian designer brand Libas Riyaz-Reshma Gangji ringing the 1st bell at the National Stock Exchange at BKC,Mumbai .

Stellar move, Libas by Riyaz Gangji has just gone public. What does this mean? It means that Libas has become the first Indian designer label to get listed on the National Stock Exchange of India. With an Initial Public Offering of Rs.68; Libas has done what many Indian design houses and labels have been trying to do since the past half a decade.

When approached, Riyaz explained  the reason behind the move. “It’s easy to grow your company if you have people’s confidence. Once your brand has the top of mind recall, sales automatically happen. Of course, this does not mean that your product or service can suffer. In fact, now that we are publicly listed, there is an even bigger responsibility towards the people that the brand has.”

Before the face show of the New Year; this comes across as much welcome news, especially when demonetization and the current currency crunch in the country has been a spirit dampener for many businesses, fashion included.

An upbeat Riyaz added, I think being able to do business with your forte is very important. People will only notice numbers once the show is over.”

Launching an IPO is a tedious and lengthy process and can consume upto 2 years! Leave alone the added compliance and responsibilities that it deposits to the promoters’ shoulders. When we asked Riyaz Gangji what motivated him to take up this task, he answered, “Just being creative was not giving me satisfaction, I reached a point where I wanted every city in the country to wear Libas. We want to touch the lives of as many people as possible, like an FMCG brand. And such sort of a scale was only possible through going public.”

His better half and partner in everything was ecstatic, with her joy knowing no bounds. “We are already present in Pune, Mumbai Ludhiana, Delhi and in Dubai. We want to be available in every Tier 1 and Tier 2 city of India. That is the ultimate plan for now”, said Reshma Gangji.

Deepak Sharma of Saarthi,Ravi Varanasi of NSE,Rahul Roy, wished all the best to Reshma Riyaz Gangji and Nishant Mahimtura of Libas .