Cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s recently launched investment fund YouWeCan Ventures has invested undisclosed amount in seed funding in a mobile phone-based beauty and wellness platform Vyomo. Vyomo is trying to replicate the model of taxi hailing apps like Uber, Taxiforsure, Ola for salons, spas and stylists.
“We would like to support empowerment of millions of beauty professionals and help them improve their lives and income, and be part of their personal milestones,” said Yuvraj Singh.
Vyomo is a mobile marketplace for Beauty and Wellness segment, for customers, it acts like a on-the-go search, discover, book, pay and rate platform. One can search salons and spas, based on current location, compare prices, read customer reviews and instantly book the service. On the other side, for beauty salons and Spa, it acts like a SAAS based end to end salon management software that helps them grow and simplify their business by providing increased traffic, CRM, ERP, EPOS, Performance Management, Booking Management and Online Presence.
The amount of funding has been left undisclosed, however, as said during the launch regarding the investment size per startup, the fund might have invested somewhere around INR 10-25 lakh.
Based out in Delhi, Vyomo plans to list about 5,000 spas and salons in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai and Dubai, and plans to bring more than one million stylists on the platform by 2017.
The startup is founded by London Business School graduates and have a strong team of LBS and IIM professionals. Its founders include Abhinav Khare and Poonam Marwah. “Signing up with YouWeCan Ventures for securing our seed funding is an important milestone for the company that will allow us to scale up and expand to meet the demands of our global users,” said Abhinav said.
Beauty and grooming is a $3 Bn industry and is growing at 15-20% YoY.
Vyomo will compete with Mumbai-based Purplle that raised its Pre-Series A round led by IvyCap Ventures in January this year. It has tied up with more than 7,000 salons, spas; skin care and hair care chains across Mumbai. However, apart from being on the go search platform for spas and salons it is also a ecommerce platform for Online beauty and personal care products.
Yuvraj Singh had launched YouWeCan Ventures Technology Llp earlier this month, to support online startups and encourage entrepreneurship. Through the fund, he plans to invest over INR 50 Cr. in the startups in healthcare, travel, hospitality, real estate and media sectors over the period of 3-5 years. The fund is expected to close 3-4 more investments in the coming months and further, the fund is expected to raise about INR 300 Cr.
