What Gets Seen Gets Sold, Idealist RedPolka Raises $250K

Online fashion curator, RedPolka has raised an angel round of about $250K (INR 1.6 Cr) from a group of five investors. The five months old startup plans to infuse the funds to build its mobile app and expand the team.

RedPolka also has a podium for SME brands by the name polkacoffee, which is a workshop to help brands create a framework for building brands and shopper marketing needs driving more transactions for them.

Founder, Vishakha Singh is of the belief that what gets seen is sold. Following the same ideology she has been in the business of brand building and shopper marketing for years. She has worked previously at Times Group handling strategies and brand development for Times Now and events such as The Economic Times Awards. She then went on to serve a successful period at CNBC TV18, handling the marketing and alliances portfolio. Her portfolio also includes her stint at brands such as The Smart Manager and Wisden Asia Cricket at Spenta Multimedia.

Spearheading RedPolka to give impetus to indigenous products, Vishakha said, “We curate products based on affinity groups and interest graphs, with a weekly theme. We have in-house curators and designers and are looking to add automated curation to our portal.”

Along with RedPolka, Vishakha runs an advertising and media network Aurora Comms, India’s largest retail-media network.

Founded in 2014 by marketing and brand management professional Vishakha Singh, Red Polka is an online fashion curation platform for women’s fashion and lifestyle.  The platform offers product discovery for online shoppers from niche brands which have an online presence. The startup currently partners with 32 paying brands through the affiliate channel.

With an increasing focus on content-driven buying especially targeted at women’s fashion category, other competitors in the social commerce space include Helion-backed Wooplr and Tiger Global-funded Roposo, which have raised $5 million each in Series A round over the last two months.