Two engineers from Chennai spent over four years and their entire savings trying to solve a problem most men rarely talk about: sweaty, uncomfortable underwear. Historically, Indian men had largely settled for the same brands, with few alternatives offering anything meaningfully different.

Then, in 2019, Anna University alumnus Pradeep Kumar Mani and his best friend, Balaji Nandakumar, decided to change that. What began as an attempt to solve a personal problem would eventually become HIE LABS, a brand built to free men from sweat.

“It was a personal problem. We had been living with it for years, and we realised everyone around us had too. We just asked — why not us?” Pradeep Kumar Mani, Co-Founder, Hie Labs, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Hie Labs - a bootstrapped D2C innerwear brand operating out of a warehouse in Ranipet, Tamil Nadu - is now selling 20k-25k pairs of underwear a month. Its hero product, Coolism Trunk, leverages India’s first patented BALLinTECH pouch technology. It addresses the age-old heat-and-friction issue that men’s innerwear has seemingly ignored for decades.

The brand has served 2.5 lakh+ customers, became profitable already last year, and hit revenues of ₹7 Cr+ in the last year itself, and is all set to double its revenues this year, all without raising any external funding to date.

The beginning of Hie Labs was not without its challenges. They tested 93 samples over six months before finalizing the design.

“We are engineers. We don’t design for fashion. We design to solve a problem. That’s all we know how to do,” Pradeep explains.

Read Full Article at: Two Engineers Built India’s First Patented Underwear Brand – HIE LABS Now Sells 25K Pairs Monthly