Mumbai-based Sitara Digital Ventures Pvt Ltd, which runs wedding solutions portal The Wedding Brigade, has raised Rs 4 crore (around $600,000) in pre-Series A funding led by Blume Ventures with participation of four unnamed angel investors.
The funding will be utilised to enhance the product and services offerings, growth activities and acquiring talent.
The Wedding Brigade, earlier known as Indear, allows users to discover, plan and shop for Indian weddings. Founded in 2014, it recently introduced a services marketplace, which enables users to book venues, hair and make-up artists and mehendi artists online or through its concierge service.
“This round of funding gives us the necessary resources to scale our model at an accelerated pace. With our new brand identity, we are poised to make deep inroads into our country’s high-growth wedding market,†said Sanna Vohra, founder, The Wedding Brigade, in a statement.
Users in Mumbai and Delhi can currently make transactions over the platform. The company plans to expand to other cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai as well as introduce new categories such as photographers and caterers.
A bunch of startups that seek to connect couples with wedding planners has emerged in the last 12 months. The market for wedding-related services is estimated to be worth $40 billion in India, according to US-based venture capital firm CerraCap Ventures.
Some of these ventures have also secured external funding. Weddingz.in, an online marketplace for wedding venues and vendors, has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from consumer-centric venture fund Sixth Sense Ventures.
In February, Hyderabad-based With Ease Technologies India Pvt Ltd, which operates integrated wedding services provider AppilyEver.com, had raised $400,000 in funding led by Varun Aggarwal, founder and COO of Univariety, and other angel investors.
Last month, New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) launched its wedding solutions platform Bandbaajaa.com. In December 2015, CerraCap had invested in NDTV’s subsidiary Special Occasions Ltd under which the portal is housed.