SUMMARY
The Wedding Brigade Will Use The Funding To Expand Its Team and Business
The Wedding Brigade, a Mumbai-based online wedding startup, has raised $1 Mn in its Pre-Series A round of funding from Blume Ventures.
The other investors that participated in the round include Czar Capital, Mountain Pine Capital, Lets Venture investors and the Keiretsu Forum.
The company plans to use this funding to expand the team and business verticals, strengthen its community, and introduce an array of new products and services to the market.
Earlier in 2016, The Wedding Brigade also raised $629.6K (INR 4 cr) from Blume Ventures along with four other angel investors.
Sajid Fazalbhoy, Principal at Blume Ventures, said, “While we continue to see the rise in the market size and potential of the Indian wedding industry, we also see the need-gap arising from such a fragmented market. It is this need-gap that led us to The Wedding Brigade a few years ago and we are extremely happy and bullish about the way it continues to address this gap.”
Founded in 2014 by Sanna Vohra, The Wedding Brigade serves as a content, shopping, and services platform for Indian weddings. Users can browse wedding inspiration and read original content on their wedding blog, buy wedding-related products like clothing, costume jewelry, and gifts, and book wedding-related services such as venues, photographers, make-up artists and more.
The Wedding Brigade at present delivers pan-India and recently started international delivery. Its services are active in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Goa amongst others.
As Sanna said, “The multi-billion dollar Indian wedding industry has incredible potential, but must be tackled keeping in mind its complexities. Since our inception, our mission has been to create a seamless content-to-commerce platform where our consumers can find ideas, plan their weddings, and make all their purchases and bookings on a single platform. This year, we aim to delve deeper into our top-performing divisions and focus on vertical integration.”
According to a US-based venture capital firm CerraCap Ventures, the Indian market for wedding-related services is estimated to be worth $40 Bn. However, the market is crowded and The Wedding Brigade faces tough competition from portals like Shaadi.com, Jeevansaathi.com, etc with a strong backing and an already established brand name.
Also, there are startups like Weddingz.in, Shaadimagic.com, WedMeGood, ShaadiSaga, WedmeGood.com, AppilyEver.com, BandBaajaa, Bollywoodshaadis among others. These companies have been raising funds from Indian as well as international sources.
For instance, in February 2016, Weddingz.in raised an undisclosed amount in a Pre-Series A funding round from Sixth Sense Ventures. At the same time, AppilyEver.com also raised $400K in funding led by Varun Aggarwal, founder and COO of Univariety, and other angel investors.
Blume Ventures has been actively investing in companies like Grey Orange Robotics, Unacademy, Tricog Health, Locus, Healthifyme, Mettl, Exotel, Belong, Instamojo, and many more.
The ever-growing wedding market in India with multiple rounds of funding has witnessed changing scenarios in the ways weddings are held in India. As the weddings become more elaborate affair in the country, it is to be seen what new and exciting offering come from startups like The Wedding Brigade.
