Private label lingerie e-tailer Clovia raises Series A funds from IvyCap Ventures

Delhi-based Purple Panda Fashions Pvt Ltd, which runs online-first lingerie and sleepwear brand Clovia, has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from IvyCap Ventures.

Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner at IvyCap will join the board of Clovia, as per a press statement.

Clovia will use the funds to grow its footprint globally. It will use the capital raised to invest in product innovation and extensions, marketing, team development and to augment its fulfilment capacity.

"Clovia has attracted our interest and capital, due to the founding team's tremendous brand vision, ability to execute and control a fairly complex supply chain, that too in a non-trivial category..." said Gupta.

Formerly known as Cloe, the startup was founded by husband-wife duo Neha Kant and Pankaj Vermani along with friends Suman Choudhry and Aditya Chaturvedi in 2013. The company was renamed in order to better align the name with its future strategy and product roadmap.

Kant was earlier heading digital marketing at Smile Group's Bestylish.com. Vermani is the CEO of incubator and seed fund Mountain Apollo India, the Indian arm of Zurich-based Mountain Partners AG. Chaturvedi is the CTO of this fund.

Choudhry on the other hand is a fashion designer.

Clovia was funded in the seed round by Mountain Partners.

"Clovia has been growing at almost 100 per cent every quarter over the last year. In IvyCap Ventures, we have found a perfect partner to sustain the hockey stick growth curve, stick to the customer-first fundamentals and work faster towards becoming the number one lingerie and sleepwear brand in India," said Kant.

The firm sells its own Cloe brand lingerie and aims to go beyond the e-commerce platform by targeting sales through offline stores as well.

"We strongly believe several niche e-commerce verticals remain relatively untapped in India. Players with high degree of control over the entire customer experience – in this case, right from sourcing of fabric, to manufacturing, to customisation and recommendations based on deep understanding of the customer, to own-portal sales – will create the next wave of value creation in e-commerce in the Indian context," said Gupta.

In the online lingerie shopping space, Clovia competes with names such as Cilory, HerStyle, PrettySecrets and others. Its most prominent competitor is Zivame, which is backed by IDG Ventures and Indo-US Venture Partners.