FabAlley.com raises $2 mn Series A funding

High Street Essentials Pvt Ltd, the company that owns and operates FabAlley.com, an online fashion brand exclusively for women, has raised $2 million (Rs 13.42 crore) in Series A round of funding led by India Quotient. FAO Ventures, Indian Angel Network (IAN) and a group of angel investors including Tushar Singh and Ranjan Sharma also participated in this round.

With the freshly infused capital, the company will focus on increasing its offline presence and expanding its private-label offerings to widen its geographical reach, Tanvi Malik, co-founder of FabAlley said in a press statement on Thursday.

"With this round of funding we will be working on three focus areas; first being offline expansion, the second focus area will be product expansion and growing our two sub brands, and finally, we will be ramping up marketing and brand building initiatives, focusing on strategic tie-ups and endorsements to reach out to a larger customer base in India," Malik said.

Launched in June 2012 by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik, FabAlley offers design-differentiated and fashionable clothing and accessories for woman on-the-go. The USP of the brand is identifying and interpreting global fashion trends into affordable apparel, jewellery, accessories, shoes and bags for the modern Indian women.

In July this year, FabAlley ventured into the offline segment through a tie-up with Central chain, a multi-brand store operated by the Future Group. It currently has 25 stores live with Central and plans to open another 45. The company plans to partner with other large format chains along with starting its own exclusive brand outlets in the next 18 months.

It also owns two sub brands, Curve (fashionable clothing for plus size women) and Indya (an Indo-western fusion collection) and plans to add other categories such as fitness wear, swimwear and lingerie to its portfolio.

It had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from IAN in late 2013.

FabAlley claims to be growing year on year at 100% and has turned profitable in H1 2016-17.

"For the coming year, we will focus on an effective execution strategy to expand FabAlley's geographical footprint and capitalise on the large opportunities in the online space ahead of us. We are on track to hit Rs 100 crore in GMV in 2017-18 and will continue to focus on building a profitable and sustainable business in the long term," Poddar said.

The fashion e-tailing market is likely to account for 35% of total online spending in India by 2020 and become the largest category ahead of consumer electronics.

The fashion e-commerce segment in India is dominated by Flipkart, which owns fashion e-tailers Myntra and Jabong. However, a number of women-focused fashion apparel and accessories startups have attracted investor interests in recent times.

Recently, Chennai-based eShakti Pvt. Ltd, operator of an online women's apparel retailer, had raised fresh funding. eShakti, which also targets the US and Canada, operates an Indian e-commerce unit under Zapelle.

Voonik, a fashion marketplace for women, had raised $3 million (Rs 20 crore) in July while Mumbai-based shopping personalisation app for women Hippily raised $250,000 (Rs 1.66 crore) in seed funding in April this year.