SAIF Partners Invests $8.54 Mn In Online Fashion Store FabAlley

Delhi/NCR-based online fashion store High Street Essentials Pvt Ltd (HSE), which owns women-centric fashion brands, FabAlley and Indya, has raised $8.54 Mn (INR 60 Cr) in a Series B funding round from SAIF Partners.

The company plans to use the fresh funds for increasing distribution, product expansion, brand-building efforts and strengthening its technology operations. Mukul Arora, managing director of SAIF Partners will join the company’s board. IndigoEdge was the sole financial advisor to the transaction.

Founded in 2012 by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik, FabAlley is an online-to-offline high-end fashion platform, focused on women. It is available on offline brand stores like Central and Globus. The duo also went on to launch Indya, an ethnic-fusion brand, in 2016.  Indya caters to online as well as offline channels and has partnered with 15 exclusive brand outlets to create a sizable presence across Tier 1 cities.

Shivani Poddar, founder of FabAlley said, “The capital infusion will help us scale our offline presence rapidly from 15 exclusive outlets and 120 shop-in-shops to 50 and 300 respectively by the end of FY20. We will invest in new categories such as Athleisure and our plus size brand, Curve. We will also look at amplifying our brands’ voices through ATL and BTL marketing initiatives.”

The company claims to have turned profitable in the fiscal year 2018, with gross merchandise value (GMV) of $11.85 Mn (INR 80 Cr). The company aims to close FY19 at a GMV of $21.34 Mn (INR 150 Cr) while remaining EBITDA positive.

Tanvi Malik further explained that the company’s goal to grow online and offline opportunities by leveraging their channel-agnostic approach through phygital store experiences, virtual fitting rooms, seamlessly merged forward and reverse logistics.

The Indian online fashion market is estimated to hit $12 Bn-$14 Bn by 2020, and the market, according to Technavio, is expected to grow “impressively” at a CAGR of around 63% by 2020.

In the online fashion space, beyond market biggies such as Amazon and Flipkart, FabAlley competes with the likes of StalkBuyLove, Voonik, Google-backed Fynd, etc. The market is also seeing fresh competition from Chinese fashion brands like Shein, ClubFactory etc which have gained popularity with their affordable prices and contemporary clothing.

With the Indian ecommerce market expected to reach $200 Bn by 2026, the offline plus online push of fashion brands continue to enchant the Indian customers.