Khadim’s Brand Guidelines: A Chitpur Shoe Shop, Kolkata Retail From 1993 and a 2025 Demerger

A small shop in Kolkata’s wholesale quarter.

Khadim’s is a footwear retailer from Kolkata. Its company, Khadim India Limited, traces its roots to KM Khadim & Company, a shoe shop in Chitpur, in the north of the city, which Satya Prasad Roy Burman acquired in 1965, English Wikipedia says. Outlook Business described it in May 2012 as a 300-square-foot store on Chitpur Road, Kolkata’s wholesale hub, then known for its place in the wholesale footwear market. The company’s own history says it began in the 1960s as a modest shop in the lanes of Chitpur, and the brand still carries the shop’s name.

The present company was incorporated on 3 December 1981, under the name S. N. Footwear Industries Private Limited, according to Khadim India’s website, and for its first years it wholesaled and distributed basic branded footwear. The move into retail came in 1993. Outlook Business reported that it followed the arrival that year of Roy Burman’s son Siddhartha Roy Burman, who persuaded his father to diversify into retail, and that the group opened three showrooms in Kolkata; English Wikipedia also dates the first retail store to 1993.

From Kolkata the chain spread through eastern and north-eastern India. Sources differ on when it reached the south: Outlook Business gave 1995, while English Wikipedia dates the first store in south India to 2000. In 2012 Outlook Business counted some 630 showrooms in 21 states, about 85% of them in the East and North East and about 520 of them run by franchisees, with around 70% of outlets in tier II and tier III towns. Siddhartha Roy Burman, then managing director, told the magazine that every stop on the train line from Sealdah to the border districts of West Bengal had at least one Khadim store. A public issue had been attempted in 2008 and abandoned, the same article noted.

Wholesaler, maker and retailer under one name.

Khadim’s grew as a hybrid of wholesaler, maker and shopkeeper. Outlook Business reported in 2012 that the company bought about 80% of its raw materials and finished products from some 300 outside vendors in eastern and northern India, and used its own factory for wash-and-wear and premium leather lines; it had begun building a further plant in North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, in 2011. English Wikipedia lists two manufacturing locations, in Kolkata and Kanpur. Not every venture lasted: Outlook Business reported that Egaro, a large-format lifestyle store opened in Kolkata in 2007 with two branches, was wound up in 2010.

English Wikipedia describes the company as a maker and retailer of footwear and accessories, active mainly in eastern and southern India. In 2012 Outlook Business reported that sales through company-owned outlets were growing faster than those through franchises, and that the company had built up a central distribution network to supply them.

The positioning has stayed close to the family shoe shop. In 2012 an investment banker quoted by Outlook Business called the brand’s place in the market that of a “value-for-money family footwear brand.” Khadim India’s website sorts the range by occasion and wearer, with formal, daily, ethnic, athleisure and leisure shoes, separate lines for men, women and children, and accessories alongside.

The company went public in November 2017. World Footwear reported on 26 October 2017 that Khadim India would open its initial public offering on 2 November, as a private equity investor sold out of the business. It then had more than 800 stores, mainly in eastern India, of which 162 were company-owned and the rest run by franchise partners, the trade title said; English Wikipedia gives 853 stores at the time of the offer. In 2019 the company set up a wholly owned subsidiary in Bangladesh, Khadim Shoe Bangladesh Limited, and in 2022 it signed the cricketer Shardul Thakur as brand ambassador, English Wikipedia says.

Design and documentation.

Indian footwear, bag and accessory brands tend to present themselves through names more than through pictures. A single company often runs several labels at once, each with its own logo, catalogue and shop page, so that a rubber slipper, a sports shoe and a formal shoe can reach different buyers while sharing factories and distributors. On company websites the parent name usually sits in the footer and the investor pages, while the sub-brand names lead on the shelf.

Shopfronts carry much of that identity. Many of these companies sell through a mix of exclusive showrooms, franchised stores, multi-brand dealers and online marketplaces, and their own pages count those outlets and list the cities and states they reach. Some names are above all store names: Metro Brands runs Metro Shoes and Mochi as separate store banners.

Group ownership is part of the picture. Fastrack belongs to Titan Company, the watch and accessories business, and Woodland is the outdoor brand of the Delhi company Aero Club. Others, such as Relaxo, Liberty, Campus and Khadim’s, are listed companies whose corporate pages describe their founders, their factories and their share listings on the National Stock Exchange of India and BSE.

Advertising often leans on film actors, named in dated campaigns reported by the trade press, and on dated catalogues for each range. For a designer, the useful material is the documented part: the names, the store formats, the founding dates and the factories. The palettes and type in these guides are unofficial interpretations, and no logo or product is reproduced.

A retailer split from its wholesale arm.

The biggest recent change is structural. On 29 September 2023 Khadim India told the stock exchanges of a plan to separate its distribution business, including the manufacturing division, into a new company, KSR Footwear Limited. Its shareholders approved the scheme at a meeting convened by the National Company Law Tribunal in August 2024, and the company’s investor pages carry the tribunal’s order, the record date for the new shares and KSR Footwear’s allotment of them. Khadim India says the demerger took effect from 1 April 2025, and that retail is now its primary business.

The Khadim’s stores stayed with Khadim India. Its website names Siddhartha Roy Burman as executive chairman and Rittick Roy Burman as managing director, and describes exclusive stores across East, South and other parts of the country. The same website now often writes the name in capitals, as KHADIM, while the apostrophe form Khadim’s is the form used in English Wikipedia and by Outlook Business in 2012. The investor relations section, with its stock-exchange disclosures, sits alongside the online shop on the same site.

For a design guide, Khadim’s shows how the name of a single shop in a wholesale lane can carry a whole regional chain, through franchises, a listing and a demerger. Compare Metro Shoes, another Indian footwear retailer run through its own stores, and Relaxo, an Indian maker of everyday footwear. For this guide we use a deep maroon, marigold and ink with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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