Fashion app Wooplr names Koovs' Rajesh Kamra head of commerce

Fashion discovery app Wooplr said on Monday it has named Rajesh Kamra, a co-founder of lifestyle e-tailer Koovs, its head of commerce.

The startup, run by Wooplr Technologies Pvt Ltd, has also appointed Arvind Lifestyle CEO Rajiv Mehta in a senior advisory capacity.

Arjun Zacharia, CEO of Wooplr, said the appointments will help the company grow its business and reach $100 million in gross merchandise value by 2018.

Mehta, an INSEAD alumnus, was managing director of South Asia at Puma before he became the CEO of Arvind Sports Lifestyle Ltd and Arvind Fashion Brands Ltd. He is also an active angel investor for the Indian Angel Network.

Kamra comes with a decade's experience in growth strategies. In August last year, he ventured into the loyalty rewards space by co-founding a new app called Perksmap that discovers deals from shopping and dining outlets. Although Kamra will work with Wooplr full time, he will continue to be associated with Perksmap in a passive role.

Bangalore-based Wooplr had raised $5 million (Rs 30 crore) from Helion Venture Partners in February last year.

The Wooplr app allows people to shop better based on location, occasion, interests and friends. For businesses, it says, it provides a single-point mobile application to manage their marketing, community building and sales.

The company was founded in March 2013 by four former McAfee employees. While Zacharia is the CEO, Praveen Rajaretnam heads marketing at Wooplr, Soumen Sarkar is chief technology officer and Ankit Sabharwal is chief product officer.

Zacharia has an engineering degree from National Institute of Technology Karnataka, while Rajaretnam graduated in electronics and communications engineering from Anna University. Sarkar studied at Indian Institute of Management, Indore.

In the fashion discovery space, Gurgaon-based Relevant e-solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs fashion-focused social network Roposo.com, raised $15 million (around Rs 98 crore) from existing investor Tiger Global Management in August last year. Prior to that, it had raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global. In March 2015, LimeRoad.com raised $30 million in Series C round of funding from Tiger Global and existing investors Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.