Mumbai-based fashion accessories startup Pipa + Bella has secured $600k in a pre-series A round of funding led by Singapore’s Lionrock Capital. Other investors who participated in this round are Japanese investor Teruhide Sato and Roopa Nath. The company’s advisors include GSF Founder Rajesh Sawhney and Sujal Shah, former CEO, Freecultr.
The newly raised funds will be used to expand company’s current product offerings and marketing channels, hire key management team and build out a robust technology platform.
Pipa + Bella was founded by Shuchi in 2013. It is a fast-fashion brand of jewellery that offers women with well-curated collections of fashion jewellery that are easily available at affordable prices.
Pipa + Bella derives its name from two European words that describe the company’s range of products and customers. A typical “Pipa” woman is bold, edgy and always ready to experiment and a typical “Bella” woman is a classicist, graceful, more conservative. The brand celebrates the different styles that exemplify these two aesthetics through its product range and prices.
It aims to solve two basic pain points of jewellery shopping
- Overpricing of branded jewellery with high mark-ups.
- Unbranded jewellery in online marketplaces is cluttered and lacks any proper curation or style guidance.
Pipa+Bella’s 12 members’ team, launches approximately 100 new styles every week that are all priced well between INR 300 – 3000.
Other than curated products,\ company also allow users to make their own personalised jewellery under six product categories including earrings, necklaces, rings etc. Another unique product offering is – PBBAUBLEHEAD, wherein brand collaborates with social influencers to create curated jewellery. Currently, company works with social influencers like – Miss Malini, Juice Magazine, and Kiara Advani.
Pipa + Bella targets the 22-35 year old urban woman who is fashion-conscious, social media savvy and is quick to adapt to latest trends. Company has a present traction of 100,000 users per month.
According to the founders there are over 1500 orders that are placed everyday with average ticket size being INR 1200-1500.
Over the last twelve months of their operations, company has witnessed a 300% increase in sales and a high repeat purchase rate with 42% of customers purchasing again within 60 days, a majority of which has been driven organically through social media.
According to Shuchi, Founder Pipa+Bella, the demand for fashion jewellery has grown significantly in the last few years due to high prices of gold and silver and is estimated to be a $6Bn market by 2018.
Speaking on the fundraising, she said, “We did have to convince a few VC’s that there can be brand stickiness when it comes to a segment such as fashion jewellery. Typically companies that have received funding in the vertical ecommerce play have been in categories where there is perceived repeat value. We had to showcase to investors that this segment of fashion jewellery can create a similar loyalty base.”
Company mainly competes with Gurgaon-based Youshine and Voylla based out of Rajasthan, who are also operating in the same segment but differs in the fact that Pipa+Bella continuously innovate their designs and are posting new designs per week to offer a better set of choices to the user, says Shuchi.
