About us

The Chettinad Boutique Story

Who we are

Chettinad Boutique is a start-up venture by two budding Doctors. Dr Sabharethinam and Dr Prashanth hail from the Chettinad, and are passionate about medicine, tradition and technology. Dr Sabharethinam’s father, Sundar Singaram along with Visalakshi Ramasamy, made Chettinad a tourist destination in the world to enable experiencing its culture and hospitality. Inspired by their parents and grandparents, with rich knowledge about their ancestor’s legendary tradition and values, they chose to fuse technology with tradition to disseminate the experience

An exploration in Chettinad tradition

Chettinad is popularly known for its Cuisine, Artefacts, Sarees (Kandangi), Palatial Mansions, Hospitality and much more. Many are enticed to the legendary collection of Chettinad products and rejoice its experience. We realized those who truly wanted to experience authentic traditions of Chettinad, are deprived with contemporary stuff, perceived by several people as authentic Chettinad.

That led us to create Chettinad Boutique to offer firsthand, authentic and rich Chettinad experience of various products at an affordable cost. The store will be refreshed with various traditional items from Chettinad time to time.

The Chettiars, as befitting a trading and financing lineage, have developed no handicrafts, but they have been great patrons of local crafts in their roots. In Chettinad, they have encouraged woodcraft, stone carving, metal working for utilities and decorative purposes, and also textile weaving. As part of the changing patterns of life in Chettinad, many of these artefacts have been finding their way into the antique dealer’s shops and have begun to appear as contributions by interior designers to urban homes.

Also becoming fashionable in the urban circle are Chettinad Sarees, a product of ancient looms that is now being revived. The Chettinad Saree is a thick, coarse cotton capable of withstanding the roughest washes. Checks, stripes and temple borders are the favoured patterns. Earthy reds, oranges, chromes and browns are the most popular colours. Those encouraging the revival, now offer the weavers new designs, but the traditional weaving families still produce the patterns most favoured in the villages around. Visalakshi Ramanathan is passionate about reviving the tradition of Chettinad sarees especially the “Kandangi”. It is because of her individual effort, we have the opportunity to experience authentic Chettinad sarees in its traditional colours, patterns and rich legacy.

Come experience the Chettinad legacy with us...

Dr Sabha and Dr Prashanth