Beauty Products And Services Startup, Purplle Raises $6 Mn Series B From JSW Ventures And Others

Purplle, an IvyCap-Ventures backed online portal for beauty products, spa and salon services, has procured around $6 Mn in a Series B round of funding from existing investors led by JSW Ventures. Blume Ventures and IvyCap Ventures also participated in the round.

Aiming to cater to the southern market, the startup plans to use some part of the capital to set up a warehouse in Bangalore, which makes up 15 per cent of its annual GMV of INR 150 Cr. Their focus will also be on permitting sellers who stock upto 15 days inventory in the warehouse, for insight on price elasticity and sales.

“This funding will be directed towards strengthening our technology to enable content-driven beauty discovery, create deeper salon integration and expanding our supply to include exclusive brands and our own labels,” said Manish Taneja, co-founder, Purplle.

He adds that the platform will expand its beauty services business in the spa and salon category, which is currently available in 12 cities.

Serving the needs of both brands and consumers, Purplle focuses on customer engagement for sellers and product selection, and ease of discovery for buyers. Further plans include creating a different experience for customers by using virtual reality.

Founded in 2012 by IIT alumni, Manish Taneja (IIT Delhi) and Rahul Dash (IIT Kharagpur, IIM Ahmedabad), Purplle.com is an ecommerce platform that offers beauty products and beauty appliances, and provides a directory of salons and spas in cities including Delhi, NCR and Mumbai.

In January, 2015, the startup raised an undisclosed amount in Series A round of funding from IvyCap Ventures. In August, 2013, it secured seed funding from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and Chennai Angels.

As per Morgan Stanley report, the fashion segment constitutes 30 per cent of India’s ecommerce market. Last month, online fashion startup, Voonik, raised $20 Mn (INR 134 Cr) in Series B funding led by VC firm Sequoia Capital.

Blinge, an online fashion rental platform raised an undisclosed amount in its first round of funding in May while Gurgaon-based fashion discovery app, Roposo raised $5 Mn (INR 33 Cr) in April.

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