Online craft marketplace Tjori has raised $700,000 (about Rs 5 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round from a clutch of investors in India and the Middle East.
The company will use the funds to expand the categories and brands available on its platform including in the apparel, footwear, jewellery, wellness, and mother and baby care segments, Tijori said in a statement on Tuesday.
It did not disclose the identity of the investors.
The pre-Series A round takes the total the company has raised so far to $1 million.
Company co-founder and chief executive officer Mansi Gupta said Tjori was operating a production process enabled by a proprietary enterprise resource planning (ERP) and partner-app ecosystem. The platform reacts quickly to emerging trends and launches new collections every week.
“We’ve created and retained a huge community of loyal customers,” she added.
Tjori, which is operated by Tjori.com, LLC (a subsidiary of AM Webshop India Pvt. Ltd), says it has been operationally profitable for the past one-and-a-half years, and that it plans to open its first brick-and-mortar store in New Delhi by the end of this year.
The company, which claims to have provided its services to over a million customers across 13 countries, says it focusses on products made with traditional raw material along with organic ingredients and techniques.
The investment in Tijori is another example of the interest being shown by investors and corporates in the ethnic and artisanal-lifestyle consumer space.
In June, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd said it would acquire Jaypore E-Commerce Pvt. Ltd., which runs an eponymous ethnic items' marketplace, for an enterprise value of Rs 110 crore (around $15.8 million then).
*The headline and text of this article have been updated to correct the amount that the company raised.