BackAnkit Nagori invests in fashion start-up Wooplr
Ankit Nagori, CureFit founder and former Flipkart executive, will join Wooplr board following the investment
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Bengaluru: Fashion discovery platform Wooplr Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Ankit Nagori, co-founder of healthcare start-up CureFit and former chief business officer at Flipkart Ltd. Nagori will join Wooplr’s board following the investment, the company said on Wednesday.
“Ankit has seen the evolution of our social commerce platform and his joining the board at this point is, for us, definitely a big win for Wooplr. His vast experience of building India’s biggest fashion marketplace at Flipkart made him the right person to have along on our journey, to change the way fashion discovery is done," Arjun Zacharia, founder and chief executive officer at Wooplr, said in a statement.
The latest capital infusion comes barely two months after Wooplr raised $8 million in a funding round led by Sistema Asia Fund. Amereus Group, and existing investor Helion Ventures also participated in the round.
Last year, the company raised an undisclosed amount in two tranches from InMobi founders Naveen Tewari, Abhay Singhal, and Amit Gupta; InMobi chief product officer Piyush Shah; TaxiForSure co-founder Raghunandan G.; former chief executive of Puma India, Rajiv Mehta; Astarc Ventures, and Facebook Inc. executive Anand Chandrasekaran, who was earlier the chief product officer at e-commerce marketplace Snapdeal.
Earlier, it had raised $5 million in a Series A round from Helion Ventures in January 2015.
Launched in 2013 by Zacharia, Praveen Rajaretnam, Soumen Sarkar and Ankit Sabharwal, Wooplr is a consumer content-driven marketplace, where users upload pictures in their outfits. Other users can engage with the image, by liking it, following the user, find brands which are selling similar outfits and make a purchase from the mobile app or Wooplr’s website.
The company makes money by charging 40% of the order value as commission from the brands.
“Wooplr’s focus on select top quality fashion brands is a step in the right direction. What excited me about Wooplr is the fact that they are building a fundamentally unique marketplace that combines the influencer-led format of shopping and the discovery of unique new brands. I see that brands are considerably changing their marketing strategies and influencers are becoming an important part of this new approach to reach out a young and dynamic audience," Nagori said in a statement.
The Bengaluru-based company claims to have three million users. About 1.5 million of these are active users, and 3-5% of the total users upload images. About 10,000 of such users are considered influencers, who have at least 5,000 user followers, who regularly upload images and engage with users. The company is aiming to increase its influencer community to over 50,000 by December 2017.
The majority of the users are from Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai, generating 200,000 posts per month.
Wooplr also monetizes by having brands work with influencers. The company has 200 brand partnerships including FabAlley, Nykaa and Yellow Hanger among others, with influencers promoting products from these brands.
Wooplr competes with Tiger Global-backed Limeroad and Roposo and Sequoia Capital-backed Voonik Technologies Pvt. Ltd, among others.
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