Poornima Sathyanarayana Turning Vision into Reality with STEP

Poornima Sathyanarayanan’s entrepreneurial journey is an inspiring story of turning challenges into opportunities. An engineer by training, Poornima co-founded an automation company early in her career but yearned to create something impactful in the everyday lives of people. This drive led her to establish Rhapso Fashion Tech, a platform revolutionizing tailoring services in Bengaluru by bringing high-quality, on-demand fashion solutions to customers’ doorsteps.

Her journey was supported by STEP, Development Consortium’s flagship initiative for empowering entrepreneurs. 

Through STEP’s incubator program, Poornima gained critical business insights, including customer acquisition strategies, marketing techniques, and financial management. STEP provided her with a collaborative space to refine her ideas and access mentorship from industry leaders. The program also facilitated seed funding of Rs. 20 lakhs through the Startup India Seed Fund Scheme, which helped scale Rhapso’s marketing and operations, leading to an 80% revenue growth.

Today, Rhapso has delivered over 35,000 garments to 5,000+ customers, created job opportunities for designers and artisans, and promoted sustainable practices like garment repurposing and donations. Poornima’s vision for the future includes expanding to other cities and launching an AI-powered mobile app. Her story reflects the impact of STEP in empowering entrepreneurs to build sustainable, community-focused businesses.