Apparel Online India Magazine March 1st Issue 2019 | Page 79

INDIA’S PREMIER SOURCING SHOW
1
3
F LY R O B E
TURMS
F
ounded in 2015 by IIT-Mumbai alumni Pranay
Surana, Shreya Mishra and Tushar Saxena,
Flyrobe is an online rental store for designer apparels
and accessories. The start-up rents premium brand
apparels to customers at one-third of the actual
price. The online rental store is backed by angel
investors like PayTM Founder Vijay Shekhar and
Snapdeal Founders Rohit
Bansal and Kunal Bahl. In
September 2018, the Omapal
Technologies-operated start-
up raised around US $ 3.71
million in a fresh round of
funding from IDG Ventures
and Sequoia Capital. The
rental start-up had last
raised US $ 5.3 million in
August 2016 in Series-A
funding round, which was
also led by IDG Ventures and
Sequoia Capital and Tokyo-
based fund GREE Ventures.
Apart from the above
investors, the start-up is also supported by Stanhope
Capital Chairman Leon Seynave; FreeCharge
Founders Sandeep Tandon and Kunal Shah; Toppr
Founder Zishaan Hayath and Temasek Ex-executive
Abhishek Jain. The company has been aggressively
expanding offline across multiple cities.
T
his is India’s first intelligent apparel brand
which offers jeans, T-shirts, shirts and track
pants in menswear and T-shirts and leggings in
womenswear, and comes with nanotechnologies
like stain repellent, odour resistant, cooling and
wicking. The start-up claims that the clothes are
high on comfort and low on maintenance as they
require less washing unlike normal clothes and need
less water and detergent. Founded in December
2016 by former Voonik executive Rameswar Misra
and nano-technologist Rohit Gupta, the company
raised Rs 6.3 crore from Freshworks Founder Girish
Mathrubootham and other investors in October
2018. These other investors include Reliance Retail
Lifestyle President Bijou Kurien; Pepperfry Founder
Ambareesh Murty; OneAssist Founder Subrat Pani
and Flipkart Ex-executive Mekin Maheshwari, along
with angel investors
from LetsVenture and
AngelList India. The
intelligent apparel
brand has used these
funds for expanding
its product portfolio
and range, hiring
tech talent, launching
experience centres in
top cities, and investing
in research and
development.
2 N Y K A A FA S H I O N
4 CRAFTSVILLA
E
-commerce store Nykaa started as an online beauty and
wellness retailer, in 2015, and it expanded its portfolio and
launched its own private label Nykaa Fashion. Founded by
Falguni Nayar, in April 2018, it raised Rs. 75 crore (US $ 11
million) fund. Later in the same year, it raised Rs. 165 crore
(US $ 24 million) in Series-D round of funding from existing
investors. And again in September, Lighthouse India Fund III
invested Rs. 113 crore to acquire a secondary stake in Nykaa.
The existing investors includes Sunil Munjal, consumer goods
maker Marico’s Mariwala family and Dalip Pathak, special
limited partner at private equity firm Warburg Pincus, along
with other new high net worth individuals.
T
he Mumbai-based company Craftsvilla was started in 2011
by Monica Gupta and Manoj Gupta as a marketplace to
sell ethnic products. It started its private labels in 2016 and
launched about three private brands – Avanya, Jharokha and
Anusura – in the affordable ethnic and handloom segment.
The company has received Rs. 30 crore so far from its
Singapore parent entity, Supera Investments. It picked up
these funds in 3 tranches of Rs. 10 crore each in February,
June and September 2018.
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