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Online lingerie retailer Clovia, earlier known as Cloe, has grabbed undisclosed Series A round of funding from IIT and IIM alumni-backed venture capital firm IvyCap Ventures. Though the amount remains undisclosed, but according to the sources close to the development venture firm has invested approximately $5 Mn (INR 30 Cr).
Clovia, plans to utilize the funds infused for aggressively expanding its footprint globally, innovating and extending the product line, marketing, team development and fulfillment capacity.
According to the world’s leading source for international market research reports and market data, Research and Markets, the online lingerie market in India is to grow at a CAGR of 42.32% over the period of 2014-2019. The lingerie retail market in India is estimated to be approximately INR 15,000 Cr.
Also, the changing scenario of Indian women, who invest a significant amount of time and money with the latest fashion trends, has evolved with increased interest across all the apparel categories, including lingerie. This has given rise to vendors like Enamor, Jockey, Lovable, Amante and Bwitch. Besides, with the growing interest of female consumers in lingerie segment the ecommerce players like PrettySecrets and Zivame are earning the most by providing wide genre of products and customer satisfaction. Lingerie etailers Zivame and PrettySecrets are on a look out to raise over $25 Mn and $10 Mn respectively in its new round of funding.
Founded in 2013, by husband-wife duo Neha Kant & Pankaj Vermani along with friends Suman Choudhry and Aditya Chaturvedi, Clovia is run by a leading online-first lingerie and sleepwear brand in India, Purple Panda Fashions Pvt. Ltd. The company was earlier incubated at Mountain Apollo India.
Commenting on the development Neha Kant, Founder of Clovia said, “We have seen unprecedented growth in the lingerie and sleepwear segment in the last couple of years. For a country of 1.2Bn people, there’s hardly any choice when it comes to fashion innerwear. The brand, launched primarily to cater to this need, has been growing at almost 100% every quarter over the last year.”
Investor, IvyCap Ventures is an early-to-growth stage venture capital firm that focuses on investing in Healthcare, Education, Food based businesses, Technology, ecommerce and mcommerce domains. The venture firm generally invests INR 25-30 Cr ($4-5 Mn) picking up 25%-35% stake in each of its portfolio companies.
Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner, IvyCap Ventures will also be joining the board of Purple Panda Fashions Pvt. Ltd., the parent company of Clovia as a part of this development.
The venture firm embraces IT and services startup Aujas and Vinculum, online retail startup eShakti, beauty and grooming startup Purplle.com, digital advertising startup Sokrati among others. This time the venture firm has invested in the brand showcasing the continuing interest by risk capital investors in backing ventures specifically catering to women consumers.
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