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Fashion jewellery and accessories e-tailer, Voylla.com, operated by Jaipur-based Voylla Fashion Pvt. Ltd, has raised $15 Mn in fresh funds from Peepul Capital, according to a press release. The company will use the funds in enhancing its technology, brand building, enhancement of manufacturing capacity, and for offline expansion.
Surya Mantha, investment director of Peepul Capital, will join the board of the company.
Voylla, which was founded in 2011, is integrated with over 30 online marketplaces, 25 in India, including Flipkart and Snapdeal and the rest in the US, the UK, Singapore and Middle East. Besides this, it also has three shop-in-shop stores in India in partnership with Future Group’s Central Mall.
With the fresh funds, the e-tailer plans to expand its physical store network to 100 outlets. It will set up 40 exclusive stores across the country while the rest would consist of shop-in-shop and franchise outlets. The shops would be set up in high streets and malls, and the first one will be in set in West Delhi’s Rajouri Garden in a month.
Vishwas Shringi, Founder and CEO of Voylla, stated, “We are excited about the partnership with Peepul Capital and confident that the capital infusion will help us establish Voylla as a Market Leader in the Fashion Jewellery market. With strong product focus and expansion of distribution reach, we expect significant growth this year.”
Before this round, the company had raised close to $1.9 Mn (INR 13 Cr) from Pune-based Snow Leopard Technology Ventures and undisclosed angel investors.
In an earlier interaction with Inc42, Vishwas Shringi had stated that the costume jewellery (also known as Imitation jewellery and fashion jewellery) category operates in what could be the most fragmented market. The market size is estimated to be $1.2 Bn( INR 8000 Cr) with online jewellery contributing to $27.5 Mn(INR 180 Cr).This is expected to go up to $642.47 Mn( INR 4,200 Cr). The growth rate for fashion jewellery is forecast to be higher than that of precious jewellery at 22% CAGR in the next 3 years.
Voylla gets 70% of its visitors coming from mobile and 30% from desktops. On an average, it gets 60% of orders from new users and 40% from repeat customers. The conversion from its app is at 80%. The company has currently more than 100 designers on board, churning out close to 500 new designs every week. Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Pune and Mumbai are the top few cities from where it gets maximum orders.
Shringi stated, “Even in the US, not more than 30% of the business is online, 70% is still offline. So to talk about India, there is no way we will reach more than 15% in the next five years. The large part of it is still going to be offline and it makes complete sense to go offline and capture a large piece of the offline market.”
Voylla’s decision to increase its offline presence more mirrors that of many e-tailers in the segment such as Ratan Tata funded Bluestone, Caratlane and others in different segments such as fashion e-commerce portal FabAlley, online furniture marketplace Pepperfry and eyewear portal Lenskart. All these brands have launched offline stores where the customers can touch and feel the product while for buying, they have to get on to the company’s portal.
In July this year, another player, Mumbai-based fashion accessories startup Pipa + Bella had secured $600k in a pre-series A round of funding led by Singapore’s Lionrock Capital.
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