Our Story

Reccy was born at 20,187 ft.

Stok Kangri, Ladakh. Full moon, lunar eclipse. We crossed the glacier in the dark and started up towards the summit ridge — panting, roped up, minds going blurry the way they do that high.

Somewhere on that ridge the body quit and the mind started asking the questions it saves for exactly that moment. Do we still have it in us to start something new? Have we come too far in life for this?

We kept moving. Small steps, in unison. On the summit we decided to build Reccy.

Twenty five years before that summit

None of us came to the mountains as founders. We came as students, through the mountaineering and hiking club at Jadavpur University. That's where we learned to tie in, read a rock face, carry our own weight, and look after the person next to us.

Most of us graduated twenty-five, thirty years ago — into pharma research, the Air Force, designing and erecting steel plants, software, investment banking. Every one of us kept getting out. The Himalayas, the Sahyadris, the Alps, the Peruvian Andes, Chilean Patagonia. We still do, every year.

Reccy is not one person's venture. The founders and the first backers all came out of that club. We're still on the same rope.

The rope is longer now. Nobody here came through an outdoor-industry hiring pipeline. Some were customers first — they bought the gear, wrote in about what was wrong with it, and now fix it from the inside. Others shoot photographs and film in places that take two days to reach. One plays guitar professionally. What they have in common isn't a CV. It's that they already get out, and they think a lot more Indians should.

What we kept running into

Indian outdoor gear sits at two extremes. Basic products that work, but skip the features you actually need on a trail. Or expensive global brands built for cold European winters, which have nothing to say to India's heat, humidity and monsoon.

We were buying both. We were making do with both. So we started building the space in between — gear made for Indian conditions, benchmarked against the world, priced so it doesn't keep people out.

The rule we set on day one

We will not launch a product we wouldn't use ourselves.

That rule decides everything. Every claim on reccy.in is lab-tested and field-tested. If we haven't tested it, we don't say it.

The fire

A year in, a fire took almost our entire inventory. No stock. Very little money. That's usually where a young brand stops.

We came back. Not because we're tough — because the mountains teach one thing above all else. Summits aren't climbed in one big move. They're consistent small steps over a long time. There will be bad days. You keep moving.

Why we're still here

To help 10 million Indians get out.

That's not a tagline and it's not a marketing number. The people we build for are mostly not the ones already outdoors. They're the ones who haven't gone yet — because the gear is expensive, the information is scattered, and nobody has told them what to expect or where to start.

We back the people building the outdoors

We're a small company. We can't build India's trails ourselves. What we can do is back the people already doing it.

A team spent seventy days on foot mapping a route through the Sahyadris — 2,033 km walked. We were their apparel partner, on their backs for the whole thing. What came out of it is the Epic Sahyadri Trail: 1,724 km, forty stages, mapped and free for anyone to walk.

In Mizoram, the riders around Aizawl hand-built the Ridgeline Trail themselves. We built them a jersey — 250 pieces, and every rupee of profit goes back into that trail: beginner tracks, and training for the next set of riders.

The rest of the year, we just show up. Trail runs in the Sahyadris. Downhill racing in Mizoram. A 10K in Bengaluru. Alongside clubs, trek leaders and coaches in Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Mizoram and Meghalaya — to meet people, not to sell at them.

The invitation

We can build gear that works in Indian conditions and keep it within reach. We can back the people cutting the trails. We can answer the question before your first trek.

The rest is yours. The trail you keep putting off is still there.

GET OUT.