On-demand beauty services startup Belita raises angel funding

Mumbai-based startup Belita Retail Pvt Ltd, which runs an on-demand home beauty services marketplace Belita has raised $375,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding through LetsVenture and Lead Angels.

The round was led by early stage VC firm India Quotient and Supreet Singh, CEO - Altor Executive Search, with few other investors from LetsVenture and Lead Angels participating in the fundraise.

The money will be used for scaling up the team, enhancing technology, strengthening operations and expanding to new cities.

"The Belita team has got complete control on their model. With passion and experience of the founders, we believe Belita is set to continue with leadership position within this industry," said investor Supreet Singh.

The Mumbai based company essentially aggregates beauticians and trains them to serve the customer better. Currently, it has nearly 50 beauticians on board.

"Belita has the potential and capability to grow into a multi-city service. The slow, organic growth would not help fulfil our vision. This angel round would help us grow faster by building a bigger team, better tech, and expanding to new locations and cities," said co-founder Akshay Jain.

The company was founded in September 2011 by Garima Jain, an alumnus of Indian School of Business with her husband and serial entrepreneur Akshay Jain, an IIT alumnus.

The on-demand services is seeing a lot of investor interest with another beauty services related venture The Home Salon raising seed investment from angels-backed startup accelerator VentureNursery.

There are several other ventures focusing on home related services that have raised funding over the recent past. These include Gurgaon-based UrbanClap that raised $10 million from Accel and Saif Partners; LocalOye (Tiger Global and Lightspeed), Qyk (Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Near.in (led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group, and Manish Vij of Smile Vun Group), FindYahan (led by Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India), TaskBob (Orios Venture Partners & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Venture).