Mumbai-based online men’s apparel retail start-up Fetise Retail Pvt Ltd, which runs the site Fetise.com, is raising $5 million from Seedfund by selling an undisclosed minority stake to the early-stage investor.
Fetise has positioned itself as an online designer outlet dedicated to men. According to the company, it is a ‘by invitation only’ club that offers its members a wide range of clothing, shoes and accessories from international brands.
The nine-month-old start-up, founded by Chetan Bafna, Abhishek Shah, Somya Tambi and Subir Ghosh, who studied at Gurgaon’s ICFAI Business School, is said to be recording over 500 transactions per day, with a revenue run-rate of Rs 2-2.5 crore per month, according to The Economic Times that first broke the story. The average transaction size is around Rs 1,500-Rs 1,700.
Earlier this year, fashion site 99Labels.com told Techcircle.in that it was clocking 300-600 orders on a daily basis with the average ticket value of Rs 1,800-Rs 2,000 (Read our interview of Ishita Swarup, CEO of 99Labels to know more). But then, 99Labels.com, backed by Info Edge India Ltd, started earlier and is not exactly in the same domain.
Having said that, there is nothing new in the vertical picked by Fetise. Another online retail company specialising in the same vertical is Vas Data Services Pvt Ltd’s Yepme. Then there is Robemall Apparels Pvt Ltd’s Zovi that started to sell men’s apparel and accessories, and then diversified into women’s apparel segment.
Incidentally, both companies are funded by institutional investors. While SAIF Partners led a $5.5 million investment in Zovi, along with angel investors like MakeMyTrip founder Deep Kalra, Yepme is backed by Helion Venture Partners.
In fact, online apparel and accessories retail has been a hotbed of action. Recently, Times Internet Ltd, a part of the Times Group, launched a new e-commerce site called hutk.com. Other players in the business include Fashionandyou, Bangalore-based TPS Shopping Outlet Pvt Ltd that runs the website ThePrivateSales.com and the recently launched Smile Group-backed venture Freecultr that has also raised VC funding. However, all these companies are not in traditional e-com but specialise in deals and flash sales.
For Seedfund, which raised $54 million for its second fund in 2011, this is another fresh investment. Earlier this year, it backed some portfolio companies like Pilani Soft Labs Pvt Ltd (that runs online bus ticketing site RedBus besides Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Pvt Ltd and a new investment in the two-year-old Mumbai-based start-up Nevales Networks that provides network security support services to SMEs on the Cloud.
