Online apparel rental platform Klozee shuts down; co-founders join Livspace

Online apparel rental platform Klozee, operated by Bangalore-based Humble Egg Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has shut down just seven after starting operations, pointing to the challenges faced by players in the pre-owned apparel sale and rental space in India.

Klozee co-founder and CEO Aman Haji confirmed the development to VCCircle. The news was first reported by Mint.

"Demand was a lot slower than we expected. The idea would have taken a lot of money and investment to scale up. So we decided to shut down in January," Haji said.

In August last year, the startup secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from startup incubator TracxnLabs and other unnamed investors.

Klozee was co-founded by Haji, Pratik Moona, and Prashant Jain. The three co-founders have now joined home decor marketplace Livspace. According to their LinkedIn profiles, Haji has joined Livspace's strategy team, Moona has joined as developer and Jain has been appointed general manager.

Four of its 10-member team have been hired by online fashion store Voonik, which is run by Voonik Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Haji said.

''Klozee had a great team who were entrepreneurial and fun to work with. So we decided to hire the team. They have been absorbed into various departments of Voonik,'' said Sujayath Ali, co-founder, Voonik.

Its shutdown reflects the challenges faced by players in the online clothing rental space in the country. Last month, ethnic products marketplace Craftsvilla acqui-hired women clothing rental platform F2SO4.

Revamp My Closet, a portal that facilitated buying and selling of used clothes, accessories and bags for women, was also acqui-hired by Spoyl, another online platform for buying and selling fashion wear for women.

Others startups operating in this space include STAGE 3, FlyRobe, LibeRent, Envoged and Zapyle. In December 2015, Delhi-based Technolour Dream Pants Pvt. Ltd, which operates STAGE 3, had secured angel funding from a bunch of investors, including former AOL executive Nisha Sharma, Dalmia Bharat Group's Puneet Dalmia and Stanford University professor Balaji Prabhakar.

In August 2015, Envoged had raised seed funding from Nijhawan Group's Ankush Nijhawan, Mediology Software director Manish Dhingra and AMG Investment's Gaurav Bhatnagar. Former Canaan Partners' MD Alok Mittal, Anant Goenka of Indian Express, Bollywood actor Jackky Bhagnani and Aspiring Minds CEO Himanshu Aggarwal also participated in the round.

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