Fashion Discovery App Wooplr Raises Funding From Astarc Ventures

Bengaluru-based fashion discovery app, Wooplr has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Astarc Ventures.

Wooplr was founded in 2013 by Praveen Rajaretnam, Arjun Zacharia, Soumen Sarkar, and Ankit Sabharwal. The startup connects people with local businesses, based on interests, location, and social circles. It also provides businesses a credible online presence, and enables them to reach out to new customers through word-of-mouth marketing via its platform.

Commenting on the investment, Hari Krishnan, Fund Manager, Astarc Ventures said, “Mere catalogue-based ecommerce is passé. Wooplr team has robust tech capabilities and an amazing sense of picking today’s fashion trends. More importantly, it is executing the path of content-community-commerce very well.”

Wooplr focusses on new fashions and depends on its own fashion-forward women customers partly, to do the marketing for them. This is done by women showcasing the products they buy, writing about them, and displaying their own pictures in those outfits.

As per an official statement, Wooplr claims to currently engage 3 Mn women users on its platform and plans to reach 100 Mn women users in India by 2020. The company aims to hit $100 Mn in GMV by 2018.

In February, 2015, Wooplr raised $5 Mn from Helion Ventures to expand its team and presence. Prior to that, it raised over $140K from MakeMyTrip CEO Deep Kalra and a few others in September, 2014.

Following that, in March this year, it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from the co-founders of InMobi, Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal and Amit Gupta; and Piyush Shah, Chief Product Officer at InMobi.

Startups working in the fashion retail segment have recently caught investors’ attention. In June 2016, Gurugram-based online fashion community Shopwati raised an undisclosed amount of Seed funding from Sanjiv Rai of SRKK Advisors. In September 2016, fashion discovery app Findow received an undisclosed amount of funding from Raj Singh Bhandal, Director, Next Media Works.

Other startups in the fashion retail segment include Voonik, Purplle, Roposo, etc.

The development was reported by VCCircle.