Neeman's wants to grow from 50 shops to 500 and reach Rs 1,000 crore by FY30

Picture a shoe brand that grew up on your phone. You tapped "buy", and the box landed at your door. Now that same brand wants to open five to ten real shops every single month. That brand is Neeman's, and its plan is to go from about 50 stores to 500.

On 23 October 2026, Neeman's co-founder and COO Amar Preet Singh told ETRetail that the company wants Rs 1,000 crore in yearly sales by FY30, and 500 of its own stores in the next three to four years. That is ten times the shops it has today.

Who is Neeman's?

Neeman's is a shoe company from Hyderabad. It was started in 2018 by Taran Chhabra and Amar Preet Singh. Its first big idea was unusual: men's shoes made with merino wool, a soft, light wool from Australia. Most people think wool is only for winter sweaters. Neeman's said this kind of wool keeps feet cool and dry, and it also talked about using recycled and natural materials.

For years, Neeman's sold mostly online. Business people call this D2C, short for "direct to consumer". It means the brand sells straight to you through its own site or app, with no shopkeeper in the middle. Think of a home baker who takes cake orders on Instagram.

How big is it right now?

Neeman's had revenue of Rs one hundred and eighty-five crore in FY26. Revenue is all the money that comes in from sales, before any bills are paid. FY26 means "financial year 2026", the money year that ran from April 2025 to March 2026. So FY30 is the year that ends in March 2030.

The company expects to close this year at around Rs 350 crore. That is nearly double last year. Its targets after that are Rs 500 crore in FY28, Rs 750 crore in FY29 and Rs 1,000 crore in FY30. Rs 1,000 crore is more than five times what it made in FY26.

Is it making money?

Singh said the brand is already profitable this year. In his words, "we are not bleeding". To track this, Neeman's uses a number called EBITDA margin. In simple words, it shows how many rupees out of every Rs 100 of sales are left after the day-to-day costs of running the business. In FY26 this was minus 6%, so it lost about Rs 6 for every Rs 100 of sales. This year it is aiming for 5% to 8%, which means Rs 5 to Rs 8 left over from every Rs 100.

Why would an online brand open real shops?

Think of a YouTube cooking star who opens a real restaurant. The videos made people know the food. The restaurant lets them actually taste it.

Taran Chhabra, the co-founder and CEO, gave his reasons to Storyboard18. Buying shoes is about touch and feel, he said, and people have very different choices. He pointed out that around 80% of shoe buying still happens offline. He also said online ads are getting crowded, because so many brands now fight for attention on Meta, Google and YouTube. A shop is a fixed cost, like rent. An online ad costs money again every time you want a new buyer.

He does not see this as online versus offline. In his plan, online and shops each play a different role. Chhabra expects stores to bring in around Rs 450 to 500 crore, and online sales another Rs 500 to 600 crore. Selling through many routes like this, online and in shops, is called omnichannel.

How will the stores work?

Neeman's opened its first physical store in 2023. It now has about 50. From this year, it wants to open five to ten stores every month. If it does ten a month, that would be 120 a year.

Most new stores will be company-owned, company-operated. That means Neeman's itself rents the shop, hires the staff and runs it. The other way is a franchise, where a local business owner runs the shop under the brand's name. Neeman's will keep testing franchises, but it prefers running shops itself so it can control how customers are treated.

Each store costs about Rs 50 to 75 lakh to set up, including the rent deposit, the fittings and the shoes on the shelves. A bigger "flagship" store could cost close to Rs 1 crore. The shops are usually 700 to 1,500 square feet.

Here is the clever part. Because Neeman's sold online for years, it already has data on what its online buyers want and where they live. It uses that data to pick promising cities for stores. In cities where it already has many online buyers, it says stores break even from the first month. Breaking even means earning enough to cover the shop's running costs, like a samosa stall whose sales just pay for the oil, flour and rent. It also says it gets back the money spent on building a store in 12 to 18 months.

Where do its sales come from today?

Right now, about 45% of Neeman's business comes from its own site, 30% from marketplaces (big shopping apps that sell many brands under one roof) and 25% from its shops. In three years, it wants shops to bring in about 40%, with its own site and marketplaces making up the other 60%.

It is not only opening its own stores. It is also growing through "shop-in-shop" counters (a small brand corner inside a bigger store) and multi-brand stores, and it has entered Reliance Trends. By FY30, it hopes to be in 300 to 500 multi-brand stores as well.

Where does the money come from?

Neeman's raised money from investors in December last year and says it has enough to fund its growth through the next financial year. Its investors include Anicut Capital and Sixth Sense Ventures. It also uses bank loans for daily needs and may talk to private equity investors later.

Singh said the company was valued at around Rs 500 crore in its latest round. Valuation is what investors think the whole company is worth, like the price tag on an entire shop, not just one pair of shoes. So far, about 65% of the company's ownership has gone to investors in exchange for their money.

What else is changing?

Neeman's sells about 150 to 180 kinds of products today and wants 500 to 600 by FY30. Women's shoes make up about 20% of its business, and it is adding more for them this year. Next year it plans to enter kids' shoes. It works with nearly 20 factories across India, China and Vietnam, and plans small test launches in the US, the Middle East and the UK next year.

The 500-store goal itself is not brand new. The company first shared it in September, when Chhabra said Neeman's was on course to close the year at Rs 350 crore. What the 23 October interview adds is the speed: five to ten stores a month, the cost of each store and the profit picture.

Want to hear the founder talk about selling direct to buyers? Here is a conversation with Taran Chhabra from the Retailers Association of India.

Watch on YouTube

Why should you care?

Neeman's is testing a big question: once people know you online, do you still need a real shop on the street? It is a live lesson in how a brand plans growth and checks whether each new shop pays off.

Sources

• ETRetail: From 50 to 500 stores, Neeman's plans 10X retail expansion
• Storyboard18: Neeman's to open 500 stores, betting on physical retail
• BestMediaInfo: Neeman's eyes Rs 1,000 crore revenue with 500-store plan
• Inc42: Neemans company profile
• Deccan Chronicle: Neeman's introduces merino wool shoes
• Cover photo: Flight Club Wall of Shoes New York City 2011, by Jaysin Trevino, CC BY 2.0