Founders · Origin Story
Two Collectors from Hyderabad.
One Store. Built from Scratch.
Miniature Store didn't start as a business idea. It started the way most good things do.
Two childhood friends sitting together, looking at a Mini GT model one of us had just unboxed — and realising that what we loved didn't have a proper home in India.
We're not entrepreneurs who discovered the diecast market. We're collectors who built a store because we wanted one to exist.
Who We Are
Sruthik Teja and Venkat Marri — childhood friends from Hyderabad, both deep in the 1:64 collecting world long before Miniature Store existed. Mini GT, INNO64, Pop Race, Tarmac Works — between the two of us, we've gone through all of them. The obsession with scale, detail, livery accuracy, and the hunt for the right model is something we share equally.
Miniature Store is what happens when two people who think the same way about collecting decide to do something about it.
"Finding quality 1:64 diecast in India in 2024 meant navigating unreliable resellers, paying unpredictable import markups, or waiting weeks for international shipments that sometimes arrived damaged."
Where It Started
The collecting bug hit us the way it hits most people in this hobby — gradually, then all at once. First a Mini GT here, an INNO64 there, then a Pop Race Mazda that made us genuinely stop and stare. Then Tarmac Works. Then dioramas. Then the realisation that we were spending more time hunting for models than actually enjoying them.
The collector community in India was real — passionate, knowledgeable, growing — but the infrastructure around it wasn't keeping up.
Sruthik and Venkat had talked about doing something about it for a while. Then one day they just started.
What We Were Actually Trying to Build
The easy version of this story is: we saw a gap in the market and filled it. That's technically true but it misses everything that actually mattered to us.
What we wanted to build wasn't really a store. It was a community. A place where Indian collectors — whether you're just starting out with your first Mini GT or you've been hunting LB-Works releases for years — could feel like they belonged somewhere. Where someone who knows the difference between a standard variant and a chase car is talking to you, not a customer service script.
The tagline isn't marketing copy.
Built by Collectors. Made for Collectors.
The deposit system exists because we hated paying upfront for things that might not arrive. The bubble-wrap packaging exists because we've both had models arrive damaged. The WhatsApp conversations exist because sometimes you just want to ask a question to someone who genuinely cares about the answer.
2024 — Building While Learning
The early days were exactly what you'd expect — figuring out sourcing, logistics, packaging, payments, and everything else simultaneously while also trying to stay on top of every new drop from a dozen brands at once. There were late nights, a lot of WhatsApp messages between the two of them, and more than a few moments of wondering if they'd bitten off more than they could chew.
What kept them going was the community response. The first buyers who came back a second time, then a third. The messages from collectors in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi — cities far from Hyderabad — trusting Miniature Store with their pre-orders.
That trust is something we take seriously. It's why we've never shipped a model without bubble-wrapping it. It's why we respond to every message personally. It's why Sruthik and Venkat are still the ones packing your orders.
Where We Are Now
Miniature Store today carries pre-orders from Mini GT, INNO64, Pop Race, Tarmac Works, VMB, Elowen Art, MoreArt, MBOX, and more than twenty other brands. We've shipped to collectors in every corner of India. Our returning customer rate tells us that the people who find us tend to stay — and that means more to us than any other number.
We carry dioramas because we use them ourselves. We carry accessories because a model deserves a scene. We source resin because some subjects deserve the extra detail. Every category in the store exists because one of us wanted it to exist as a collector first.
What Hasn't Changed
Sruthik and Venkat are still collectors who happen to run a store, not retailers who happen to sell collectibles. When a new INNO64 LB-Works drop lands, the excitement is real. When a model we've been waiting on finally arrives, the unboxing feels exactly like it did before any of this started.
That's what we're trying to protect as we grow. The feeling that when you order from Miniature Store, you're ordering from someone who gets it.
If you've been part of this community since the beginning — thank you.
If you're just finding us — welcome. There's a lot more coming.
— Sruthik Teja & Venkat Marri
Founders, Miniature Store · Hyderabad, India