FabAlley bags Series B funding from SAIF Partners

Delhi NCR-based High Street Essentials Pvt. Ltd, which owns omnichannel women’s fashion brands FabAlley and Indya, has raised Rs 60 crore (about $8.5 million at current exchange rates) in its Series B round of funding from SAIF Partners, a company statement said.

The round includes a partial secondary share sale by Indian Angel Network, High Street Essentials’ earliest investor. Mukul Arora, managing director of SAIF Partners, will join the company’s board, the statement added.

The company will deploy the fresh capital towards increasing distribution, product expansion, brand-building initiatives and strengthening the technology infrastructure, said the statement.

Launched in June 2012 by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik, its first brand FabAlley is a women’s only western wear label that offers design-differentiated and fashionable clothing and accessories for the woman on-the-go. The brand identifies global fashion trends and converts them into affordable apparel, jewellery, accessories, shoes and bags for Indian women. HSE sells FabAlley merchandise through its own website, other online marketplaces and offline through large format retailers such as Central and Globus.

The company launched Indya, an ethnic-fusion, offline-first brand in 2016, which is sold in 15 exclusive brand outlets. It also has a sizeable large format presence across the country and is retailed online through direct and indirect channels.

“The capital infusion will help us scale our offline presence rapidly from 15 exclusive outlets and 120 shop-in-shops to 50 and 300, respectively, by the end of 2019-20. We will invest in new categories such as Athleisure and our plus size brand, Curve. We will also look at amplifying our brands’ voices through ATL and BTL marketing initiatives,” Poddar said.

High Street Essentials Pvt. Ltd claims that it turned profitable in the financial year 2017-18 with gross sales of Rs 80 crore and is on track to close 2018-19 at Rs 150 crore while remaining EBITDA positive.

Bengaluru-based investment advisory firm IndigoEdge was the sole financial adviser to the transaction.

FabAlley had raised Rs 5 crore in venture debt from Trifecta Capital early this year and had raised $2 million in a Series A round of funding in 2016 led by India Quotient. FAO Ventures, IAN and a group of angel investors including Tushar Singh and Ranjan Sharma had also put in money then.

Deals in the space

A number of fashion e-commerce firms selling women’s wear online have raised venture capital investment this year.

In August this year, TechCircle had reported that Delhi-based women’s fashion e-tailing platform StalkBuyLove was in the process of raising about $3 million in a fresh funding round from new and existing investors.

In the same month, Ahmedabad-based Nimana Fashions Pvt. Ltd, which runs online womenswear brand Enakshi, raised Rs 80 lakh (about $114,000) in seed funding from two undisclosed Gujarat-based investors.

Around the same time, GAIA Bespoke, an omnichannel platform for made-to-measure western womenswear, secured pre-Series A capital from angel investor Sanjib Jha, former chief executive of venture debt provider IntelleGrow.

In June this year, fashion e-tailer eShakti, which focuses on the womenswear segment, raised Rs 75 crore ($10.1 million) in fresh funding from private equity firm Paragon Partners.

In April, Mumbai-based online fashion resale marketplace CoutLoot raised an additional $1 million (Rs 6.5 crore) as a part of its ongoing pre-Series A funding round led by Jadevalue Fintech, the investment arm of Chinese microfinance company CashBUS. Existing investors Artha India Ventures and funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts also participated in the round.