Fashion startups no more unfashionable for angel investors
NEW DELHI: Angel investors who were wary of the fashion and lifestyle space in India are taking greater interest in such startups, going by the number of investments made.
Six investments have been made in the space so far this year, according to data shared by Venture Intelligence with ET, up from four in 2015 and one in 2014.
The value of investments made in fashion companies stood at $38 million in 2015, up from $21 million in 2014.
One of the investee companies is StylFlip, a social platform to sell and shop pre-owned apparel and accessories, which got an undisclosed sum from real estate developers Raj Gala Shah and Zaheer Memon. YourNest Angel Fund led a pre Series A round for Fashalot, an online to offline location based store discovery platform.
Jaipur-based fashion retail platform Yufta raised a pre Series A round from Ajay Data, a founding member of the Rajasthan Angel Investor Network. Hippily , a Mumbai-based shopping personalisation app raised $250,000 in seed funding from investors like Sridhar Ramaswamy , senior VP , ads and commerce at Google and Rakesh Mathur, founder of Junglee.
The top fashion deals of 2015 were -Voylla, which got $15 million from Peepul Capital; Relevant E-S, Wooplr and Clovia getting $5 million each from investors like Tiger Global, Helion Ventures and IvyCap Ventures; and Voonik getting $6.5 million from a funding round led by Sequoia Capital.
"Investors certainly seem to be taking a greater interest in fashion and lifestyle brands in India and are putting in money where they see growth. It's a reflection of the changing demographics in India and customers evolving everyday. There's more focus on looking good and spending on fashion," said imitation jewellery company Voylla's co-founder and COO Jagriti Shringi.
Shringi said Vo ylla, which secured the funding in October last year has used it to expand its footprint. It is adopting an omni channel strategy and will open 100 stores this year, and will expand globallly to store in store formats in markets like Dubai and the US besides kiosks in major malls across India. Twenty stores are operational currently.
"Investments in the fashion space have reached a consolidation phase now. There's a big opportunity in the private labels and the big companies will focus on private labels," said Navin Honagudi, investment director at Kae Capital. The fund has invested in a Fynd, a fashion discovery app that ties up local retailers and lets users locate and track inventory in those stores.
Voonik which raised 6.5 million dollars from Sequoia and other investors in March last year is planning to raise around 18 million dollars and is currently in talks with investors, said Sujayath Ali, co founder and CEO, Voonik. "We have made good progress in one year. We have around 9 million users and get 20,000 orders each day. We have clocked in Rs 45 crore in gross merchandise value in one year," he added. Marketplace Voonik, which was focusing on Indian wear is now expanding to categories like footwear, lingerie, beauty and western wear and has also launched Mr Voonik, an app for men's fashion. Voonik is planning to grow four to five times in gross merchandise value sales this year.
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