Fashion rental startup Flyrobe gets $5.3 mn from IDG Ventures and others

On-demand fashion rental platform Flyrobe has raised $5.3 million (about Rs 35 crore) in a Series A investment round led by IDG Ventures.

Tokyo-based GREE Ventures and existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated in this round, the startup said in a statement. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Leon Seynave, chairman of Stanhope Capital, invested as well.

"Flyrobe has quickly emerged as the largest and most loved fashion rental app in India," said Abheek Anand, principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, explaining the reasons for investing in the startup.

Flyrobe had earlier raised seed funding of $1.7 million from Sequoia Capital, Snapdeal founders Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl, FreeCharge founders Sandeep Tandon and Kunal Shah, Powai Lake Ventures founder Zishaan Hayaath and former Temasek executive Abhishek Jain.

Omapal Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs the startup, was founded in September last year by IIT Bombay alumni Shreya Mishra, Pranay Surana and Tushar Saxena.

Prior to founding the startup, Mishra worked at Everstone Capital while Surana was with Deutsche Bank and Saxena was the CTO with Triptainment Technologies.

"With this round, we will continue to scale Flyrobe and grow 4-5x by March 2017," Mishra said.

The startups has tied up with designers such as Ritu Kumar, Masaba Gupta and Shehla Khan.

Flyrobe competes with Bengaluru-based Zapyle.com, which also lets users shop and sell premium and luxury fashion brands on the platform. Blinge, Elanic, LibeRent, Stylish Play, Share Wardrobe and Etashee are among the other prominent portals renting out premium fashion/pre-owned apparel in India.

Many of these ventures are trying to replicate the success enjoyed by international players such as Poshmark, Secoo and Glambot.

The fashion segment has seen a bit of consolidation lately. Ethnic products marketplace Craftsvilla acqui-hired women clothing rental platform F2SO4 recent. Revamp My Closet, a portal that facilitated buying and selling of used clothes, accessories and bags for women, was acqui-hired by Spoyl, an online platform for buying and selling fashion wear for women.

Bengaluru-based online apparel rental platform Klozee, operated by Humble Egg Technologies Pvt. Ltd, closed operations two months ago.

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