About the authors
Shreya and Siddhartha are the co-authors of My Fantastic Failures . The siblings are also the co-founders of their international fashion brands August and AIGHT which they retail online and at their flagship store Pret Castle.
Shreya is an IT professional with a decade of experience working in India, Australia and New Zealand. Presently she is busy expanding their business and devoting time to writing. When she finds time, she spends it in the scenic settings of nature. She loves eating finger chips on a beach. A hungry reader, she reads everything, even the fine print on the bill boards. An animal lover, she takes great satisfaction in working for animals. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand. A face that smiles in passport photos too is married to her soulmate Sapan.
Siddhartha is the Director at August Fashions and Pret Castle. Alumnus of NIFT, he holds a patent in green fashion. His work was invited by London Science Museum and has been considered one of the top nine fashion innovations across the globe. Recently a NASA scientist presented his work in a Silicon Valley conference. Sid has showcased August and AIGHT at India Fashion Week and Paris Ethical Fashion Week. His work is covered by Discovery Tree Hugger, FTV and leading forums in India and internationally. Beyond work, he plays guitar and keyboard. He is also an enthusiast lover of plants and animals. If you see money plants hanging out of a bulb or plants growing in coffee mugs, you can look for Sid around. The animal lover in him is available 24x7 for any animal in need. He lives in Greater Noida, India.
S RISHTI P UBLISHERS & D ISTRIBUTORS
N-16, C. R. Park
New Delhi 110 019
First published by
Srishti Publishers & Distributors in 2015
Copyright Shreya Upadhyaya Siddhartha Upadhyaya, 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.
Typeset by Eshu Graphic
Dedicated to our parents
Dr J.S. Upadhyaya Santosh Upadhyaya
They never cease to inspire. We hope someday we can also be kind, inspiring, humble and helpful like them and spread goodness around .
Acknowledgements
Thank you dear readers for giving us an opportunity to share our story with you. We are humbled. Many thanks to Srishti Publishers for giving us an opportunity to reach you all.
Heartfelt gratitude to our parents Dr J.S. Upadhyaya and Santosh Upadhyaya for making our lives worthwhile by being perfect parents, trainers and mentors. We are thankful to God for blessing us with this wonderful set of parents. It has been an honour to belong to them. We take pride to be known as their children.
We are forever thankful to Sapan. He is my husband and an elder brother to Sid. A very dear person in our lives, pillar of support and someone we fall back upon in times of crises. Also, thanks to him for his wonderful suggestions.
Always supportive family Yogesh Sharma, Somlata Upadhyaya, Madhubala Upadhyaya, Ratnakar Swain, Rajalaxmi Swain, Madhusmitha Swain and all other dear family members.
Difficult to imagine life without you guys, who in your splendid individual ways have been very supportive always B.D. Bhojwani, Sanjeev Jain, Rajeev Jain, Sandeep Tiwari, Devender Negi, Alok Priyadarshi, Sanjay Bhardwaj, Anuj Kumar, Virendra Singh Guddu, Rajendra Pal and Brijpal Singh.
Friends, who are like extended family Puneet Pathak, Samit Kumar, Alok Kumar, Abhinav Gahlaut, Ravi Kumar, Manish Anand, Amit Kumar Bhoorang, Rahul Singh, Somanshu Kalra, Kavita Raheja, Anjali Sharma, Raman Khosla, Charu Khosla, Aarti Arora and Rajesh Arora.
Thanks to the students of IIT Roorkee, Saharanpur campus we continue to share our lives with. We respect your presence in our life and see you as a gift we have received from our father.
Thanks to the almighty for transforming our dream into reality. It feels like just yesterday that we were looking for a brand name. Merely a figment of imagination once, the name fought with other possible names to exist today. The name is Pret Castle.
Thanks to our mentors, Paulo Coelho, Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Giorgio Armani, Dhirubhai Ambani and Richard Branson who shared their inspirational lives with their great work thus giving us an opportunity to get inspired. But how is it possible to have such mentors? We read books and made them a part of their life.
Your mentors can not reach you and make you part of their life; but you can have as many mentors and make all of them a part of your life .
Sid and I, individually also would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to each one of you without whom this book would not have been possible. Our sincere thanks to all you wonderful people.
Shreya
- Akanksha Tyagi, Moitrayee Bhaduri, Sujoy Neogi for accepting to be the first readers of the manuscript and giving their valuable suggestions. My memories of Akanskha reading books dates twenty-one years back, when we were in class six. So when she said she liked the manuscript, Sid and I worked with double the speed to finalise it. Jeevan Gaikwad and Moitrayee Bhaduri I was inspired by you both to write a book.
- Conway maam and Poonam maam for having faith in me since childhood. Rami aunty for constantly denying any help to me in writing my moral science answers in class one. She made life easy for her daughter by writing her answers but did larger benefit to me by setting me on a quest to write the best answers myself and discover my love for writing.
Siddhartha
- Aneesh Mittal for fighting my high court case. Somlata Upadhyaya, my aunt to show me the way to take the case forward.
- NIFT for giving me a direction in life. All my friends and classmates from NIFT.
- A special thanks to those who said no to me and made my life difficult over and over again. You have been a real source of inspiration.
And most importantly, we are grateful for all the failures that happened in our life. We are glad to share them with you for they became the reason that we could achieve our dreams. Thus the name.
Welcome to My Fantastic Failures .
About the Book
Do you know what does flying straight mean? It means if there is injustice seek justice, if there is a dream chase it, if there is a failure step over it.
Who flew straight?
Well, many do and Sid too has flown straight all his life. He flew straight through the fashion world too. (Dont read it otherwise!)
This journey started when Sid went to study fashion technology at Indias premier fashion college in Bangalore in 2004. Exceptionally intelligent and blessed with creativity, he came across as a humble boy who was in general respectful to all. This son of an IIT professor possessed infectious passion to inspire anyone to dream like him. He will excel in whatever he decides to do, He is a visionary, It is rare to find people with his caliber and passion for work were few things that people had to say about him.
