In Thiruvananthapuram, far from the usual global fashion circuits, a small group of friends are experimenting with socks. The project started three years ago. They never imagined how far the idea would eventually take them. Now, the project has turned into Haspo — a brand that exclusively designs socks.
Hapso didn’t begin as a business idea at all. It grew out of an art community called Happyccino, formed five to six years ago by engineers, designers, photographers, and self-taught artists who simply wanted a space where creativity felt accessible. They gathered over coffee, small workshops, and started experimenting with wall and pebble arts.
“We were constantly thinking about how to bring our designs into a real, but unique, product. We tossed around a lot of ideas, but nothing felt like us. Around that time, I saw a friend receive a pair of bright, funky socks as part of a Google Local Guide reward. It caught my attention. We had never seen socks with that kind of design language here,” says Vijith V S, co-founder of Hapso.
So Vijith started digging deeper. “That’s when I realised there was an actual business opportunity. Big brands like Nike, Adidas, and Jockey all make socks, but there’s barely any innovation. The designs look exactly the same. When I brought this up with the group, the idea clicked. That conversation eventually became Hapso.”
Vijith, along with other co-founders Anees S S and Ananthu S B, began researching textile technology, knitting constraints, the challenges of manufacturing, etc. They discovered that India had only a handful of homegrown designer sock brands, and almost none operating in south India. Minimum order quantities were intimidating. Getting the right materials and reliable manufacturing partners took time. Still, the idea felt aligned with the collective’s creative instincts, so they kept going. And two more joined the core team, Amal Dev and Nanda Gopan.
“Before we committed to production, we designed around forty concepts and sent the mock-ups to friends across different age groups. They ranked them by preference, and the top seven or eight became our first collection. The response was way beyond what we imagined. At a small stall at the Olam festival, we sold 500 pairs in just three days,” he says.
Hapso’s early collections leaned into this playful spirit, with cotton socks featuring fun and expressive visuals. As they grew, the team pushed deeper into material innovation. They began working with bamboo fibre, drawn to its antimicrobial properties, comfort, and durability. This led to designs suited for athletic use, expanding their customer base to those looking for performance-oriented options.
What surprised the team was that people never bought just one or two pairs. Many bought sets of four or five, mixing designs the way people collect small artworks. As Hapso expanded its catalogue from an initial eight designs to around fifty today, orders also started coming from outside India.
“Right now, we are already present across major e-commerce platforms. We are even exploring something that is still unusual in India — a first-of-its-kind ‘all-socks’ store. It’s a long-term goal, but we hope to introduce the concept soon through retail showrooms in cities like Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi,” the founders say.