Fashion product discovery site RedPolka raises $250K from five angel investors

Mumbai-based DOS Interactive Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates online curation platform for women's fashion lifestyle RedPolka.com, has raised $250,000 from five angel investors, the founder of the company told Techcircle.in without disclosing the names of the investors.

The firm will use the funds in team expansion and development of mobile application.

"One of the investors is associated with an international venture capital fund. The other one works in the banking sector while the rest are people working as senior executives with multinational companies. All of them are known angel investors," Vishakha Singh, founder of the company said.

The startup was registered in November 2014 but started signing up brands in January this year.

It was founded by Singh who has previously been associated with firms such as Times Now, CNBC TV 18 and Future Media India Ltd. She also runs Aurora Comms, a shopper marketing and retail media network.

RedPolka.com is a discovery portal for fashion and lifestyle shopping—be it from a designer label or the lady next door or e-commerce portals.

The portal shares basic information about products such as where to buy and price range for consumers.

The company has over 10 employees and recently hired a chief technology officer.

"Our aim is to build consumer engagement. Thirty per cent of our consumer almost come on a daily basis," she said without disclosing the transaction numbers.

The startup currently has 32 brands on its platform, including e-commerce companies and entrepreneurs. These brands pay and sign up on the platform.

Talking about the funding, Singh said that the company never went out looking for funds. Instead the investors approached the firm. "We did not go to people; they reached out to us. We did it for the sake of learning and it has been a good learning experience."

Earlier this year, similar startup, Bangalore-based Wooplr Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates a platform enabling hyper-local discovery of products and commerce Wooplr.com, raised $5 million (Rs 30 crore) from Helion Venture Partners.