Modi Toys is an award-winning intergenerational brand of modern toys and books, rooted in Hindu and South Asian culture. We’re on a mission to create representative and meaningful toys that diversify playrooms and bookshelves and inspire all generations of South Asians to take pride in their faith and dual identities. My brother and I were inspired by our newborn daughters to create the type of toys and books that reflected our heritage and roots.
Admittedly, no single product can bridge the paradoxical gap between wanting to assimilate with the American lifetstyle, yet still retaining our culture. But we can certainly try.
We want to create a (modi)fied version of what you and your kids already know and love. By introducing these toys at an early age, we hope to spark curiosity about their culture. The gift of knowledge may last a day, but the gift of wonder lasts forever.
We bootstrapped the business with $25,000 of our personal savings. We also received some free grant money that is allocated too, and that available for women, Asian, and minority owned businesses. Read more on free grants for Asian owned businesses.
, and since, have sold our products to over 29 countries. Since launching in 2018, our products have captured the hearts and minds of celebrities like Mindy Kaling, Food Network’s Chef Maneet Chauhan, Edward Weeks, and The Resident’s Manish Dayal! Our products are available online at www.moditoys.com and across other major e-retailers including Amazon, Etsy, Walmart, and Maisonette. Our goal is to land in big-box retailers like Target, Walmart, and Hamley’s to reach a wider range of customers offline.
Avani’s story
My brother/co-founder, Viral, and I immigrated to New Jersey from India with our family when I was 8 years old. Having spent a considerable part of our childhood in India, my siblings and I grew up with a deep sense of connection to our heritage. Our parents’ upbringing only further helped nurture our love and appreciation for our culture.
But when we both became parents ourselves in January 2017, we quickly realized how clueless we were about ensuring our children felt just as connected to their Indian roots as we were growing up. As full-time working parents, we wanted a simple solution that could be found in toys. What we needed was a fun and meaningful toy that would introduce our newborn daughters to their rich heritage. Surely, these must exist with the abundance of products in the $27 billion toy market, right?
Nope.
Surprisingly, we couldn’t find a single toy reflective of our identity — those that went beyond addressing gender and ethnicity. As it turns out, toys that represented our race, culture, and faith, simply didn’t exist, despite the growing segment of the Indian population over the past 10 years. Taking a page out of our immigrant, entrepreneurial parents’ book, we decided to “just figure it out” and make the toys ourselves.
We launched Modi Toys in 2018 with our premiere of the musical Baby Ganesh collection — and sold out instantly — demonstrating the demand for more novel and representative products. We have been growing steadily over the past three years, thanks to the launch of additional products and greater brand awareness. We’re now hoping to optimize our website to improve the user experience, and in turn, increase our conversion rate.
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