Footwear Startup Solethreads Bags Funding To Enhance Product Design

Casual footwear startup Solethreads has bagged $3.7 Mn funding in a Series A round led by Fireside Ventures. The round also saw participation from angel investors Nihir Nalin Parikh and Dhaval Nalin Parikh, along with existing investors DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital. 

Founded in 2020 by Gaurav Chopra, Sumant Kakaria, Aprajit Kathuria and Vikram Iyer, Solethreads manufactures casual footwear products. 

The startup aims to invest the fund on product designing and brand marketing. Talking to Inc42, cofounder Sumant Kakaria said that in the current footwear market, knowing the ecosystem is very important. “To enable the same, we also want to use the funds for enhancing functionality and work on the designs,” he added.

Kakaria furthered that the brand started with flip-flops which is their best selling product and gradually moved to manufacturing sneakers. Thus, the startup wants to augment its inventory accordingly. 

Prior to the latest funding round, Solethreads raised investment in two tranches, both were led by DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital. The initial INR 13 Cr funding was raised in 2020, while the second, INR 14 Cr funding was secured in 2021. 

Commenting on the market competition, Gaurav Chopra said that not every Indian brand caters to the taste of the youngsters, and those that do are way more expensive than the products of Solethreads, which further adds to the advantage of the startup. 

According to Chopra, “Global brands don’t see the Indian market with great business potential as they need to mark their products at lower prices for the country. Against this, we are offering original domestic products in the country itself. So that adds to our advantage.”

The footwear industry, especially the sneakers segment is full of copies of original products which cost much less than the original products. This poses competition to the Indian brands making original products. Citing this, Kakaria said that there are always people who look for quality over big brand names on duplicate products. 

Its direct competitor Flatheads got acquired by another D2C fashion startup Styched recently. 

Last year in October, another footwear startup Yoho bagged $2.43 Mn in a Pre-Series A funding round to scale up capabilities for new product offerings.