Our Speakers

Dhruv Toshniwal has been extremely inspired by his family business, Banswara Syntex, which has been in textiles for more than 45 years. His grandfather had started a textile mill in Banswara in 1976 and has grown the business over the years to become one of India's largest exporters of textiles, yarn fabric, and garments. He has been privy to his father’s journey working with global brands like Zara, Uniqlo, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, and the evolution of iconic garments like the Chino pant courtesy of Banswara’s work with Levis in the 1990s. He used to go to Banswara often as a kid and The [Pant] Project came through as a natural extension of his experiences growing up. Dhruv has been an undergrad at Wharton from 2009-13, a time when many highly successful and aspirational direct-to-consumer brands were founded in the US. When Dhruv moved back to India in 2017, he felt like there was a market gap in this regard and was confident that 2020 would be the decade of India building its future direct-to-consumer brands on a massive scale.