From Knitwear to Compliance: How Keshika Mahesh Is Making Fashion Traceability Accessible for Every Brand
Keshika Mahesh started in fashion with her hands close to the product - trained in knitwear design, grounded in how clothes are actually made. But it was during her Master's research at the University for the Creative Arts that her focus shifted upstream. Studying fashion traceability, she kept returning to the same question: if brands are doing genuine work to make their products more responsible, why does so little of that effort reach the customer?
Working at Marks & Spencer brought the gap into sharper focus. Sustainability claims were everywhere - yet the detail behind them rarely was. And with EU Digital Product Passport regulations set to become mandatory by 2027, the pressure to close that gap was no longer optional. The problem, she saw, was that most solutions were built for large enterprises. Smaller and mid-sized brands were expected to meet the same standards with a fraction of the resources.
That's what DigiProPass is built to change. The SaaS platform helps fashion brands structure product-level data, generate compliance-ready sustainability insights, and make that information visible to customers - without requiring perfect data or a large team to get started. In this interview, Keshika explains what she observed, what she built, and where she sees the future of product transparency in fashion.
This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org
What inspired you to start?
DigiProPass came from something I kept noticing over time. My background in knitwear design grounded me in the product side of fashion, but it was during my Master’s at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) that my perspective started to shift. Through my dissertation, I began focusing more closely on fashion traceability, specifically, how sustainability in fashion is measured, structured, and ultimately communicated.
By the time I was working at Marks & Spencer in the UK, I could see how much effort goes into making products more responsible. But more broadly, I also noticed how disconnected that effort can feel from what customers actually see.
Sustainability often gets reduced to broad claims, or explained in ways that are too technical to relate to. Over time, that makes it harder for brands to communicate clearly, and for customers to understand what’s actually being done.
When Digital Product Passports started becoming part of the conversation, it felt like a shift, but much of it was still framed around compliance. I wanted to build something that didn’t just help brands meet requirements, but helped close the gap between the work being done and what people actually see.
What problem are you solving?
Traceability in fashion is becoming non-negotiable, especially with upcoming EU regulations like Digital Product Passports. But most existing solutions are built for large enterprises, while small and mid-sized brands are expected to meet the same standards without the same resources.
DigiProPass is a SaaS platform built with that reality in mind, making Digital Product Passports practical and accessible for these brands.
It enables them to structure product-level data, generate clear sustainability insights, and translate that information into formats that are structured, compliant, and customer-facing, without adding unnecessary complexity.
By starting with the data brands already have and allowing them to build over time, DigiProPass helps turn traceability from a compliance burden into something more useful, both for meeting requirements and for communicating impact more clearly.
What’s next for you?
Right now, the focus is on making it easier for fashion brands to get started with Digital Product Passports, even without perfect or complete data. As regulations evolve across the EU, we’re building in a way that helps brands stay ahead without adding complexity to how they already work.
But beyond compliance, the bigger opportunity is in how product information is actually used. Today, most sustainability data is collected for reporting, but rarely translates into something customers can see or engage with. Digital Product Passports create a way to change that, by making product-level information visible, understandable, and connected to the product itself.
That same layer also opens up more practical circular pathways. By linking information directly to products, it becomes easier to keep them in use for longer, whether through resale, reuse, or redistribution models, rather than letting them drop out of the system.
The long-term vision is simple: sustainability shouldn’t sit in disconnected systems or high-level claims. It should live at the product level, where it can be understood, trusted, and used to extend the life of the product itself.
This is part of our ongoing 20 Founders On a Mission series. New editions publish regularly. To be featured or nominate a founder, write to us at hi@foundedbywomen.org
