Ecommerce startup Unamia , which deals with children wear, has raised undisclosed amount in angel funding from Bangalore-based incubator AngelPrime. Although the quantum of funding could not be immediately ascertained, given the investment strategy of AngelPrime, it should be in the range of Rs 1-4 crore.
Bangalore-based Unamia, co-founded by Jyotsna Pattabiraman , Mihir Mohan and Debasis Chakraborty, offers kidswear for newborns and also for kids up to eight years old. The site is currently live in beta.
An MBA from Stanford University, Pattabiraman has previously worked with Cybercash Corp, Oracle corp, eBay, Outlook Ventures, Yahoo!, Visible Path and Internet Entertainment India. IIT Kanpur alumnus, Mohan has previously worked with Virtusa, BEA Systems, The Hit Factory, XEN GlobalTech, N-NET Technologies and Eterno Infotech before setting up Unamia. Chakraborty is an alumnus of National Institute of Fashion Technology and IIM Bangalore, who has worked with Lenny Fashion Ltd, Bangladesh, Tata International, Garments International, Indus League Clothing Ltd, Mahindra Retail and Studio Attire Initiative.
The startup will face steep competition from Firstcry, Babyoye, Inkyponky, Hushbabies and Mahindra Retail’s property Mom&Me, besides various others including Fashioandyou.
As a part of the investment, Sanjay Swamy, Bala Parthasarathy and Shripati Acharya (managing partners in AngelPrime) along with Rajesh Mashruwala have joined the board of directors. Angel Prime was formed last year and also brought on board Mashruwala, one of the founding members of TiE, as its lead investor. AnglelPrime is focusing on mobile payments, e-commerce and apps for smartphones and Tablets.
In 1999, Bala Parthasarathy and Acharya founded online photo-sharing site Snapfish.com, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in March 2005, the same period when Yahoo acquired rival photo-sharing site Flickr.
Acharya joined Cisco Systems as director-marketing (new market development – emerging markets) in 2003 and shifted to the role of managing director in 2008, learning solutions for the company globally. He is now the Managing Partner at Angel rime. Parthasarathy stayed on with Snapfish after the acquisition and worked on as the general manager and then as the VP (Europe, the Asia-Pacific and Japan) until 2010.
Sanjay Swamy founded mChek, a mobile payment provider, in 2006. Now, Swamy is part of the UIDAI/Aadhaar project, as are Acharya and Parthasarathy. Swamy is also the co-founder of Zipdial, a Bangalore-based mobile start-up.
