Koskii

General information

The word `Koskii’ means `girl’ in Nawayati. It is the spoken language of the Nawayat community whose roots can be traced to sea-faring merchants and mariners from Arabia or Persia whose ships anchored along the Uttara Kannada coastline several centuries ago. They settled in towns and villages here and passed down food, language, cultural and mercantile traditions that continue within our community even today.

Koskii traces its roots to the early 1900’s when a silk and cotton textile business was established by our ancestor Abdul Rehman Badsha and his four sons in Virajpet, Kodagu. It soon became the preferred choice for a growing clientle. The first retail outlet, CH Badsha and Co. was set up in 1922 at Mercara, the capital of district Kodagu. A strong sourcing network at traditional textile, weaving and karigari centres across India was also built to ensure high quality and design exclusivity. We continue to rely on and extend this legacy of sourcing connections even today.The business then expanded to multiple stores in Mysuru and Bengaluru.

The Mina Bazaar occasion wear brand was established alongside by Saifulla Akhtar in Kolar in 1992. It opened its doors to Bengaluru in 2009. From our first store in Shivajinagar we expanded to stores at Kamaraj Road, Chickpete, Bengaluru’s busy silk hub and the city’s popular shopping destination, Commercial Street.

The launch of our Jayanagar store marks Mina Bazaar’s evolution into Koskii, an exclusive collection of Indian ethnic occasion-wear with a retailing lineage that is now over a hundred years old.