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Bollywood and TV celebrity Rannvijay Singh has invested an undisclosed amount in IStyleYou, a Gurgaon-based mobile app to deliver personalised styling service. Rannvijay will also be endorsing the brand.
The raised funds will be used for branding, marketing, and product expansion. Earlier in February this year, the portal also raised a seed funding of $100K from Green House Ventures (GHV).
Founded in November 2015 by Pallav Modi, Amit Kejriwal, and Vinayak Khanijo, IStyleYou is run by Uninext Solutions Pvt Ltd. It provides a platform, where users can interact with fashion stylists and also know what is trending as per their style profile. Currently, their product catalogue has Apparels, Jewelry, Footwear and Cosmetics and they have a team size of 10.
The network of professional stylist helps the customers to buy the apparels and accessories, based on their personal profile and preferences. The stylists are highly curated and are on-boarded after multiple rounds of interviews that test their knowledge and experience in the fashion world.
IStyleYou’s technology is based on intelligent algorithms and assists human stylist to be more efficient and accurate in delivering personalised recommendations. The customer can also take a picture of an apparel or accessory and ask for advice from the network.
Rannvijay instantly connected with the Idea of styling, as he understands the pulse of the Indian youth. He knows that fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of ecommerce in India, which is projected to be a $30 Bn market by 2020. An enthused Rannvijay said “ISY is a unique concept, they have rock solid team. Now it’s time to rock and roll.”
The portal is currently getting a traction of 10,000+ users already interacted with 25+ fashion stylists, and accessed 5000+ styles and 1 lakh curated products. Their core focus has been on building a scalable product that their users love. ISY is looking to scale by using both – machine learning and AI.
While Delhi and Bangalore seem to have the maximum number of users of this app, there seems to be a paradigm shift in the user-base from the metros to the tier-2 cities as well. And unsurprisingly, there are more women than men, but the ratio seems to be shifting there as well.
“We are super excited to have Rannvijay to be a core part of the ISY team. He will play a crucial role in making ISY a leading youth brand,” said Pallav. Vinayak further added that they hope to leverage his popularity and fan following in expanding the need and reach of their brand.
According to Vikram Upadhyaya, Chief Mentor, and Evangelist at GHV Accelerator, “This team has cleared the TESTPoC criteria – my personal mantra for a startup to both – sustain and scale. A highly self-driven and committed team; they are always open to different points of view and very adaptive.
Other startups which recently grabbed celebrity funding include Smartron (Cricketer Sachin Tendulkar); HealtheMinds Pvt. Ltd (Cricketer Robin Uthappa); Virtuals Digital LLP (Actor Dino Morea); Liftee (Rannvijay Singh) and Intelligent Interfaces Pvt. Ltd (Cricketer Yuvraj Singh).
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