FabIndia visionary Bim Bissell passes away

Bim helped shape FabIndia with a vision to modernise Indian textiles and garments, making them appealing to the urban crowd

by e4m Desk
Published: Jan 10, 2025 12:39 PM | 2 min read

Bimla Nanda Bissell, the wife of FabIndian founder John Bissell, passed away on Thursday at 90. Reports say that she died of age-related complications.

Bimla—Bim as she was fondly known—helped shape the chain retailer of garments, furnishings, fabric and jewellery made by artisans across rural India.

Her husband John founded the company in 1960. While it initially started as a company exporting home furnishings, it became a platform to market the diverse craft traditions of India fifteen years later.

With her vision, FabIndia became India’s largest private platform for products that are made from traditional techniques. She understood the great potential of Indian handloom and found ways in which traditional Indian textile aesthetics and fabric can be modernised to appeal to the urban crowd.

Bim’s journey started with the Cotton Industries Emporium in New Delhi as an advisor in 1958. Her experience there led to the conception of FabIndia, given her expertise in Indian textiles like Chanderi, Banarasi, etc.

Bim has run the Playhouse School and worked as a social secretary to US Ambassadors John Kenneth Galbraith, Chester Bowles, and Judge Kenneth Keating in New Delhi. She worked for 21 years with the World Bank and as a senior accountant and executive ASP for the Government of India’s Tourism and Travel Account from 1972 to 1975.

She worked as an external affairs officer at the World Bank in New Delhi from 1975 to 1996. In 1992, with the help of Japanese government funds and the World Bank, she founded Udyogini, an NGO that works with assetless, landless women in India, with Ela Bhatt of SEWA as chair.

She is survived by her son William Nanda Bissell, the chairman of FabIndia, and daughter Monsoon.