TC Show Off Ep 18: How online fashion brand FabAlley is creating a niche for itself by catering to fashion conscious women

In the eighteenth episode of TC Show Off, a weekly show that provides startups a platform to showcase themselves, their business models, the core USP etc., FabAlley's co-founders Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik showcased how the startup is creating a niche for itself by catering to women who understand fashion and are looking for an outlet for the same.

Launched in June 2012, FabAlley offers design-differentiated and fashionable clothing & accessories for woman on-the-go. The USP of the brand is identifying and interpreting global fashion trends (for the modern Indian woman) into affordable apparel, jewellery, accessories, shoes and bags. The site also offers a fashion blog, which provides fashion bytes, trend reports, style tips and street style beats, in addition to a fashion quiz.

"We have 1,500 styles across our categories, which is probably the largest catalogue for any online brand in India for women as of now. This is also our biggest differentiator," said Shivani.

"We have our own design team and everything that we manufacture is designed by us. So in that sense we are not a marketplace- we don't buy and sell. Rather we are an online brand," she added.

In addition, the startup does not work on seasonal collections, rather focuses on monthly collections, and claims to be launching around 200 products every month. "Our products are for a more discerning and fashion conscious audience, which basically includes women who understand fashion and are looking for an outlet for the same," mentioned Tanvi.

Funded by IAN, the startup aims to become a Rs 100 crore brand in the next two years.

However, Prajakt Raut, founder, The Hub, talked about the challenges that FabAlley will have to face in order to do the same. "FabAlley has to recognise that retail, online or offline is a very capital intensive business. What this basically means is that every two years they will have to be in the market looking for capital for rapid expansion and growth. A lot of startups in the e-commerce space have not been successful purely because they did not have their fund-raising strategy well-sorted out and well planned," said Raut.