Jagmag Lights: Former College Buddies Turned Entrepreneurs Illuminate the Industry with Unique Decorative Lighting Startup

A couple Upasana Singh and Chirag Choudhary started Jagmag Lights in 2015. Today, the company

is one of India’s leading manufacturers of affordable lighting Solutions,

Greater Noida (Uttar Pradesh):  What do you call a couple who quits a combine total of Rs 10 lakh package per annum job and started to sell lights. And what would you say if the person told you that they made just Rs 80,000 in one year in his new business.

Before you jump to the conclusion, let us tell you the story of Upasana Singh and Chirag Choudhary, the couple in question is a duo of successful entrepreneur today at Greater Noida in Gautam Buddha district of Uttar Pradesh.

After completing his MBA in Marketing, Chirag was working at a Lighting import firm in Ghaziabad.

Whereas his friend and then wife was working as an admission head at IILM collage Greater Noida.

Chirag and Upasana were good friends before getting married. Being engineering and mathematics background the couples have very good analytical mindset. The couple has seen the involvement of lighting industry in different industries like home décor, hotel and banquet and how all market is captured by China based companies. The duo had considered the same idea for India but with different concept, instead of manufacturing fixed products they started to customized lighting products as per the demand of customer and soon big hotels, banquet, restaurants, interior designers, builders and lighting showrooms started to contact them.

The couple started the Jagmag lights in a rented 10x10 room with almost negligible investment. Jagmag lights started with a concept of trading in which company get fabricated the lights from small vendors and further sell them to house owners and shopkeepers.

Today, with a network of 1000+ dealer, Jagmag Lights is now a well-known lighting manufacturing company in Uttar Pradesh, with dealers in all big cities of India.

In 2015, Couple saw that the LED lights market was flourishing in India with people accepting LED lights to incandescent lights.

They procured some samples from a few local manufacturers and began to sell those products.

“We used to take two to three samples and go around the industrial area in Greater Noida. We were able to sell 5 to 10 pcs per day,” they said.

We made around Rs 80,000 in one year by trading in LED lights. From an annual salary of Rs 10 lakh in combination, there earnings in a year plummeted to a mere Rs 80,000.

They thoughts of joining back any corporate company to earn good money passed their mind many times.

“I used to lead a lavish life while working as an employee. I spent everything; I earned in one year on myself. I never had any savings,” says Chirag.

“When we started on our own, we were very clear that we will not take a single penny from our family, “says Upasana

Since LED manufacturing is a very capital-intensive business, they got into trading, which they soon found out was not lucrative.

After one-year, in 2016 jagmag lights started to get orders from small showrooms of Greater Noida for Fancy and decorative lights. So, they decided to start their own manufacturing.

Chirag is from engineering background and Upasana has good communication skills. So, they divided their responsibilities. Now chirag handles all of the manufacturing works whereas Upasana takes care of sales part. First time they also hired some fabricators, welders and electricians to get their factory started.

In year 2017, Jagmag lights decided to grow their roots from local to national level. At this stage company purchased its own domain name I.e., jagmaglights.com and started to market their projects and product online using a website. That time most of the people thinks that lights came from China only but soon as they heard that some Indian company manufacturing lights in India, they started to contact Jagmag lights using their website.

In year 2018, Jagmag lights was working as a direct or 3^rd party vendor for almost all big hotels and banquet.

“Those days were like dream comes true we were making 100 feet long chandeliers for banquets and hotels; customers were surprised to know that we can fabricate the same light they can draw on paper” says Upasana

“We had hours of meeting with interior designers in discussion of technical aspects of different concepts in their mind” says Chirag

Jagmag Lights is continually growing so in year 2019, The couple decided to convert their proprietor company into Private Limited. That time jagmag lights started to export also. Company got its first export order in the last of year 2019 and all of sudden Covid 19 situation rises up.

After 2-year consecutive lock-down we again came back to business with lots of debts on us, all export orders got cancelled till that time, material we purchased to fabricate those orders got rusted. We have high debts of vendors and pending rent broke all of our hopes.

After long dark year in year 2022 we again back to business, all of our projects resumed to that time. Since import hampered completely due to covid 19 situation so now industry rely completely on local suppliers only. So, the first time we launched our fixed range of products to cater this new demand of market. In the last of year 2022 Jagmag Lights launched its first E-commerce platform with complete range of Decorative lights.

Jagmag Lights, which clocked a turnover of Rs10 lakh in 2016-17, has been growing 150% year on year since then. They have projections for Rs 20 crore for 2023-2024.

The couple have 3-month baby now and living a happy satisfied life.