“My job is to curate and predict fashion. When you came in, you probably did not know you needed Sambas. But when you saw them, you wanted them. We know how to curate for that moment,” says Anchit Kapil, Co-Founder, CrepDog Crew and it was this instinct that helped him scale CDC into a Rs 130 crore brand.
Founded in 2019 by Kapil, Bharat Mehrotra, and Shaurya Kumar, CrepDog Crew has evolved from an Instagram luxury reselling page into a massive e-commerce marketplace and experiential retail brand.
Today, CDC operates 3 stores across Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, with another store opening soon in Gurugram, while delivering to over 5,000 pincodes across India.
This year, the company has crossed Rs 130 crore in revenue, and is eyeing Rs 600 crore in revenue over the next 2 years. It has also planned expansion into Bangalore, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Pune.
In a freewheeling chat with IMAGES Business of Fashion, Anchit Kapil, Co-Founder takes us through the journey of founding CDC: from a six-hour sell-out to building what he calls the “Tata” of India’s premium youth culture space.
Excerpts from the chat…
When you started, the sneaker resale market was still very nascent in India. What early signs made you believe this market had long-term potential?
It was the first day of testing the pilot project. Those first 10-12 shoes came in, and my bet was they would take 20 days to sell. They were sold within six hours. That was it. That one day in 2019 happened, and that is when I knew that by 2025, we had to be the biggest player in India.
Tell us a about your stores.
All stores come from the local vibe of Delhi. The city housed the company’s first store and since Delhi is the city of metros, the Delhi store is designed like a New York subway station with a basketball court outside it.
Mumbai being the city of arts, the Mumbai store is designed like a Scandinavian art gallery. It also hosts Asia’s biggest sneaker wall.
And in Hyderabad, we have our biggest India store. It’s 8,000 square feet in size, and designed like a Nawab’s wardrobe. Now we are opening up one store in Gurugram.
Before we open a store in a city, the CDC team lives in that city for at least 30 to 60 days. This is when we finalise the store location. As a company, we truly believe that anything which is the product of a great deal of micro detailing and thought has its own character and quality.
Is a non-metro store coming up?
We see strong engagement from consumers across India—from cities like Aurangabad and Kanpur to many other non-metro markets. They follow us closely, engage with our content, and connect with the brands and stories we showcase.
However, when it comes to physical retail, our focus remains on metros. Given the nature of the products we carry and the concentration of purchasing power, cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad continue to offer the highest density of our target consumers.
That said, demand from non-metro markets is already significant through online channels. In many ways, limited physical access creates aspiration and FOMO. Consumers may not be able to walk into a store, but they are still willing to make the purchase. Luxury and premium retail often operate on a different set of dynamics, where exclusivity itself can become a driver of demand.
In fact, 75% of our orders come from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. We have delivered across all 28 states and more than 4,000–5,000 pincodes. Our revenue is evenly split between online and offline – 50-50.
You have consistently championed emerging Indian brands and positioned CDC as more than just a retail platform. How do you identify high-potential brands, and what role does CDC play in helping them scale?
At CDC, we have always believed that Indian brands have the potential to become globally recognised names. India is one of the world’s largest garment-producing nations, with an incredibly talented pool of creative entrepreneurs. Over the past five years, our focus has been on identifying, nurturing, and scaling promising homegrown brands, often when they are still at a very early stage.
What we’ve built is much more than an aggregation platform—we’ve become a demand engine for emerging brands. We know what the consumer will buy before the customer knows he wants that product. Our teams work round the clock, scouting for promising brands – with at least 500 to 1000 followers – and providing them with visibility, credibility, and access to consumers. CDC has become a launchpad for India’s next generation of fashion labels. As a non-discounted platform, we also ensure that brands can build value without compromising on their positioning.
Looking ahead, we are extremely bullish on Indian brands and are now focused on taking them global. Our vision is to create a world-class stage for homegrown labels, with plans to expand into some of the most iconic retail destinations globally over the next few years including stores on Fifth Avenue in the US and on Oxford Street in London.
And how do you showcase the foreign brands that you currently carry?
For CDC, foreign brands enter in separate categories as legacy players. We have P-More in shoes, Casio in watches, Ultrahuman for fitness tracker rings, New Era for hats. Aside from this, we are getting a couple of major legacy brands in the next 40 days. We have just signed a contract with one of the biggest global luxury fashion brands. They will have their own stores inside CDC stores.
Your business has witnessed significant growth despite softening sneaker prices. What does this tell you about the maturity of the market and the future of sneaker demand in India?
India’s sneaker market has evolved significantly over the past few years. What began as a niche community willing to pay high resale prices has gradually become more mainstream. One of the biggest drivers has been accessibility – while premium sneakers earlier commanded prices of Rs 25,000–30,000, consumers today can access limited-edition pairs at Rs 10,000–15,000, expanding the addressable market considerably.
While the core sneaker audience remains in the 14–35 age group, we’ve seen interest across generations—from children as young as eight to grandparents shopping alongside younger family members. This broadening appeal is also reflected in our customer loyalty, with repeat purchases consistently contributing 40–42% of our business over the past two years.
Although sneaker values have softened, demand continues to accelerate. Our revenue has grown from Rs 60 crore two years ago to Rs 130 crore this year, while sneaker trade volumes have increased by 65%. For us, that’s the clearest indicator that consumer demand for sneakers is only getting stronger and will continue to evolve as the category matures.
Are you also expanding into adjacent or even non-adjacent categories?
Yes we are. We started with sneakers in 2020, ventured into apparel, which is now a big category for us. Our approach is to go into a category, win it fully, and only then move on to the next one.
Post apparel, we are starting the zero-to-one journey in fragrances and watches. Everything else – caps, jewellery, accessories – will keep growing in parallel. Our first fragrance has received great response from consumers.
In fact, we are working on a second store in Bangalore which will be sized between 5000 and 8000 square feet and will house all CDC accessories.
And then there is that picture of CrepDog Crew chips — what is that about?
CDC is an aggregation platform, but at the end of the day, we are selling what other brands create. So what happens when I want to give someone a taste of CDC itself? I cannot give you a Nike shoe or another brand’s clothing.
So we started creating our own products. The first was CDC Juice – a one-litre juice box with a T-shirt inside. Then came our biggest product line: CDC Ice Pops. They are packaged like ice lollies, but you get socks inside matching the fruit flavour on the box. We did 50 colours for CDC Ice Pops.
Then, we did CDC Chips and we wanted to represent CDC in a flavour. CDC’s vibe may be international, but at its heart, it’s an Indian company. The international side became truffle flavour, the Indian side became banana chips. We dropped them in October as a limited edition. We got over 1,000 messages asking for more. So we re-released them and they are live right now.
What does the next phase of growth look like for CDC, and how are you approaching retail expansion across India?
Retail remains at the centre of our expansion strategy. We closely track the relationship between per-square-foot investment and per-square-foot revenue, as that is one of the most important indicators of sustainable growth. Today, we operate around 10,000 square feet of retail space, and our goal is to scale to 1 lakh square feet over the coming years.
We are expanding both physically and operationally, with plans to enter multiple cities including Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and Pune. In the near term, we aim to open 10 new stores while continuing to strengthen our overall retail ecosystem.
From a business perspective, our target is to cross ₹500–600 crore in revenue over the next 18–24 months while maintaining profitability in the 8–10% range. Growth for us is intentional and disciplined—we prioritise the quality of expansion over speed.
And what is CDC’s long-term ambition?
We are not trying to become the largest retailer. Our ambition is to become the platform that defines premium youth culture in India, and eventually exports it globally. The foundation is already in place: Strong community, trusted curation, cultural authority. What comes next is scale with the same discipline.
For CDC the ethos is that the most trusted brand always wins. We are the Tata of our world.
