The Souled Store Brand Guidelines: Mumbai’s Licensed Pop-Culture Clothing Label Since 2013

Fan merchandise for grown-up fans.

The Souled Store is a clothing and lifestyle brand from Mumbai, founded in 2013. afaqs!, in an October 2024 interview with co-founder Vedang Patel, named its four founders as Vedang Patel, Aditya Sharma, Harsh Lal and Rohin Samtaney; VCCircle in April 2025 described Patel as co-founder and chief executive, and also gives 2013 as the founding year.

The starting idea, as afaqs! reported it, was to offer good-quality fan merchandise of a kind that at the time was mostly sold in niche markets. Patel told the magazine that the founders expected streaming services to build a large audience in India for global films and television series over the following years, and that a market for clothing referring to those shows would follow. The magazine also noted that licensed merchandise in India had earlier centred on children’s school bags, stationery and toys, and that The Souled Store had aimed its licensed lines at an older audience instead.

The company began with casual wear. By 2024, afaqs! reported, it had added sneakers, caps and other clothing, and used references from Marvel, DC Studios and popular sitcoms on t-shirts, sneakers and bags. Patel also told the magazine that a large part of the business was not licensed at all: plain shirts and its own humorous t-shirts sat alongside the character designs, and t-shirts as a whole were a smaller share of the range than its name might suggest.

Outside money arrived from 2019. VCCircle reported that the company’s first institutional round came that year from RPSG Ventures, followed by rounds led by Elevation Capital in 2021 and the private-equity firm Xponentia Capital Partners in 2023, and that the cricketer Hardik Pandya, previously a brand ambassador, became an investor in October 2023.

Licences, stores and a membership.

Licensing is the core of the brand. VCCircle reported in April 2025 that The Souled Store held more than 200 licences, including One Piece, Naruto and Marvel, and that its product line had grown to include cargo pants, linen shirts and sneakers. In August 2025 IGN India reported the launch of an Attack on Titan range of regular and oversized t-shirts, officially licensed by the publisher Kodansha, sold on the brand’s website and in its stores; the same report listed clothing based on Naruto, Demon Slayer, One Piece, Solo Leveling, Marvel and DC, and noted Naruto-themed perfumes released in 2024.

The shops came later than the website. In October 2024 the company had just opened its 30th store, at the Palladium Mall in Ahmedabad, afaqs! reported. By April 2025 it operated more than 40 stores across India as well as selling online, according to VCCircle. The same interview described a membership scheme that gives members early access to new launches, priority shipping and discounts, and a dedicated website for the United States alongside a move into the Middle East.

For a designer, the model has two layers. The Souled Store’s own name sits on its stores and website, while the character artwork on its licensed lines comes from rights holders such as Kodansha, the publisher named by IGN India, and from the Marvel and DC properties listed by afaqs!. Its plain shirts and humorous t-shirts, which Patel described to afaqs! in 2024 as a large part of the business, carry the house brand without a licensed character.

Design and documentation.

Indian fashion and lifestyle brands tend to present themselves through what they make for particular moments. Ethnic-wear labels sort their ranges by garment, from kurtas, suit sets and sarees to sherwanis and lehengas, and by occasion, from festivals and office days to the separate ceremonies of a wedding. Western-wear and suiting labels lean instead on fabric, fit and the working week, and many companies now sell both kinds of clothing side by side.

Ownership is part of the story. Several names sit inside larger listed or private groups, such as Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail, Vedant Fashions, TCNS Clothing and Raymond, while others remain founder-run or family-run companies that have taken outside investors. Corporate and investor pages are usually the plainest record of this: they set out founders, subsidiaries, stock-exchange listings and the dates on which a label was launched, bought or merged, and those pages are a sensible place to start when tracing who owns a brand today.

Visual identity is mostly carried by the stores and the campaigns rather than by published brand manuals. Exclusive brand outlets in malls and high streets, shop-in-shops in department stores, cricket sponsorships, cinema spots and celebrity ambassadors do much of the work, and a company’s logo is often seen first on a shopping bag, a jersey or a billboard. Colour palettes and typefaces are seldom documented in public.

This guide follows that record. It sets out founding dates, owners and listings as the companies and dated press reports give them, names collections and campaigns only where a source names them, and treats the colours and type shown here as an unofficial interpretation rather than a brand standard.

Adding a second pop-culture label.

In April 2025 The Souled Store bought Redwolf, another Indian pop-culture merchandise brand. VCCircle reported on 29 April 2025 that the deal had been completed, that its financial terms were not disclosed, and that Redwolf’s founders, Ameya Thakur, Rahul Jaisheel and Vivek Malhotra, would join The Souled Store team. Mint, reporting the same day, described Redwolf as a rival brand and The Souled Store as Mumbai-based. afaqs! reported that the purchase would widen the company’s range across films, television shows, music and other entertainment categories.

Its backers, as VCCircle listed them in April 2025, are the venture capital firm Elevation Capital and the growth-stage investor Xponentia Capital Partners, with earlier investment from RPSG Ventures. That differs from Mumbai neighbour Bewakoof, which Entrepreneur India reported in 2026 is majority-owned by TMRW, a business of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail.

The brand’s own look is not documented in a public manual. The company writes its name as three words with “The” included, and uses it across its website, stores and products. Its online shop presents the range as official merchandise of superheroes and films alongside t-shirts, joggers and backpacks. afaqs! and VCCircle both reported that the cricketer Hardik Pandya had served as a brand ambassador, and the 2024 afaqs! interview said the website carried a collection presented under his name.

For a design guide, The Souled Store shows how a retailer can build a recognisable house brand around artwork that mostly belongs to other people. Compare Bewakoof, another Mumbai brand of printed casual wear, and Reliance, another large Indian business group with interests in fashion retail. For this guide we use a deep comic red, slate blue, pale rose and ink with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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