Alumna used marketing savvy to build niche toy company

Avani Sarkar once dreamed of working in a large ad agency but now uses her marketing savvy to make the toy company she created as big as it can be. It was at Rutgers Business School where she soaked up case studies about how to solve real-world problems creatively and make pitches to executives.

“Being able to exercise that muscle as much as possible is what I found to be a really critical skill,” said Sarkar, who graduated in 2005 with a marketing degree and in 2011 with a Rutgers MBA. “It helped put me in that mindset of a lot of these entrepreneurs building companies with such little resources.”

Her company, Modi Toys, sells Hindu-inspired plush toys to help children connect with their heritage in a fun way. Sarkar co-founded the company with her brother, Viral Modi, a Rutgers University 1999 graduate in Physics.

Sarkar chose Rutgers Business School for its academic reputation, affordability and diversity, the latter being especially important after growing up in New Jersey, primarily Somerset. “I wanted to continue being in that kind of environment where I didn't feel like a minority or feel like I stood out for the wrong reasons,” she said.

“I felt really welcomed at Rutgers. My friends and I could be ourselves,” she said. “We felt comfortable in our skin, and in our hyphenated identities as Indian Americans.”

In 2011, while working a corporate job, Sarkar launched her first company, Ever After Proposals, a boutique service for those planning to pop the question. Along with what she learned at Rutgers, the venture taught her how to acquire customers and stand out from the competition. She shut the business after four years when Modi Toys took off and demanded more attention.

“I was always creative minded in terms of thinking about getting products noticed and talked about,” Sarkar said. “As a student, the most valuable skill I learned was how to take an audacious goal, break it into smaller pieces, and tackle them one by one. No problem is insurmountable if you can break it down and prioritize.”  

Sarkar and her brother’s wife gave birth in January 2017, pushing the siblings into parenthood. Modi was the inspiration for Modi Toys – he wanted to give his daughter a plush toy that looked like a Hindu god and said a Hindu prayer when it was squeezed. “It seemed like an obvious idea at the time,” said Sarkar, 39, now the mother of three. But when she did research, Sarkar found nothing suitable existed.

Four months later, Modi presented a sketch of the toy, took it to a manufacturer and had a physical prototype by the end of the year. Sarkar snapped a photo of her daughter, almost one then, with the prototype and posted it in a Facebook local moms group seeking feedback. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Testing the market further, Sarkar posted in moms’ groups around the world, receiving similar feedback. The toy appealed to Indian mothers but also non-Indians who wanted to give the plush as a gift or expand the cultural awareness of their own children. Negative feedback was limited, primarily from more conservative moms, Sarkar said.

Armed with market data, the siblings launched the company in fall 2018 with inventory they thought would last six months. They sold out in three weeks. Word of mouth – from real moms, not influencers – and the Diwali holiday helped accelerate sales.

While working on Modi Toys, Sarkar was a senior marketing manager at American Express Global Business Travel, but she got laid off in September 2020, as travel tanked due to the pandemic. “I came to a crossroads,” Sarkar said. “I decided to quit Corporate America and focus on Modi Toys full time.” Her brother had made the full-time leap a year earlier.

The company is based in Edison, N.J., and New Delhi, India, where Modi moved with his family one month ago. Manufacturing and some fulfillment happens in New Delhi. Edison houses the company’s warehouse and main fulfillment center. The U.S. is still Modi Toys’ primary market, but the siblings aim to grow sales globally with an acute focus on India.

“In the U.S. we have to go fishing for our customers. But in India, we don't have to do that as much as we're fishing in a much bigger pond,” Sarkar said.

She also wants to grow a media arm of the business, creating animated content with Indian nursery rhymes for the audio. Sarkar is living her dream of marketing, but for her own company, not an agency.

“Rutgers gave me the tools to lay out the foundation and groundwork,” she said. “I feel like I did manifest what I’ve always wanted to do.”

-Sharon Waters