Bangalore-based Urban Tailor has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Unitus Seed Fund. B. S. Nagesh, (founder of TRRAIN and former MD, Shoppers Stop) also participated in this round. He will be advising the company on strategy and growth.
Urban Tailor was founded by Vasudevan T, Lavanya Venkatraman and Ashish Singhal in March 2015. It is a customised, professional tailoring service for women which comes at the click of a button.
Talking about the development, investor B. S. Nagesh said “As a retailer I see two trends here – while offline and online sales of garments continues to be on the rise, I know that a big chunk of ready-made apparel doesn’t always fit the customer well. And the market for ready to stitch and fabric hasn’t dipped either. With both, I believe there is a huge opportunity and potential for Urban Tailor to become a branded, nation-wide, on-demand service for tailoring and alterations, that is reliable and of high quality.”
Urban Tailor manages orders by aggregating a network of local, small tailoring units. It follows a 3-step ordering and delivery process. Once a customer chooses the style and pattern and places an order online, the pick-up service collects the fabric and measurement garment from the customer’s doorstep. Next, customisation requirements, if any, are confirmed with the customer and the package is then sent for tailoring. Finally, the stitched product is checked for quality and the garment is delivered to the customer. The turnaround time on the garment is within 10 days at price points starting at INR 400.
The startup will use the newly raised funds for building tailor capacity to undertake more orders/day. Also, the funds will be used to innovate its service offerings, and for expansion to more cities.
Within a year, Urban Tailor has serviced over 20,000 customers recording a steady 40% month-on-month growth and 52% repeat customers.
Prior to this, in July 2015 Urban Tailor had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by a group of angel investors (mostly ex-Myntra executives).
Investor Unitus Seed Fund is a venture seed fund supporting startups innovating for the masses in India. Unitus invests in healthcare, education, mobile & consumer, retail & ecommerce, financial services and agriculture sectors. Founded in 2012, Unitus Seed Fund is part of the Unitus Group, a financial services group operating in India and other emerging markets since 2000. Unitus Seed Fund is based in Bangalore and Seattle, and is a member of the Capria Network.
