Founded in September 2025, Klydo has become the second quick-fashion startup to shut down, raising questions about whether the model is fundamentally harder to crack than quick commerce. While the promise of delivering trendy fashion in under an hour attracted investor interest, turning that promise into a sustainable business has proved far more difficult. Is quick fashion facing structural challenges, or is the category simply too early in its evolution? Mint explains.
Who are the key players in quick fashion?
The race to deliver fashion in minutes is still a small one. New-age startups such as Slikk, Knot, Zilo and Zulu Club are building businesses around the promise of delivering trendy apparel within hours or even minutes. Klydo and Blip were other entrants before they shut down operations. Meanwhile, established e-commerce companies are also experimenting with faster fashion delivery. Myntra has expanded its rapid-delivery service, while Ajio and Nykaa Fashion have been investing in faster fulfilment. Unlike traditional ecommerce, these players rely on dark stores or micro-warehouses stocked with a limited selection of high-demand products to enable near-instant deliveries.
Why have two quick-fashion startups already shut down?
While Klydo has not disclosed a reason, simply saying it is pivoting to a ‘sharper product vision’, it is not the first casualty in India's quick-fashion experiment. In July 2025, Blip shut down less than a year after launch, with co-founder Ansh Agarwal citing funding constraints and execution challenges. The startup, which promised 30-minute deliveries through a network of micro-warehouses, said bootstrapping made it difficult to compete in a capital-intensive market. Agarwal also pointed to delays in refining the company's go-to-market strategy, which slowed its expansion. The shutdown underscored a key challenge for quick-fashion startups: the model requires significant upfront investment in inventory, logistics and brand partnerships before it can achieve scale.
Has quick fashion managed to attract funding?
The success of quick commerce sparked investor interest in applying the same model to fashion, with several startups raising capital to test the idea. Slikk has raised $13.5 million in investor funding, including from Nexus Venture Partners and Lightspeed, while Zulu Club has also secured seed funding to build its rapid-delivery fashion platform. Klydo, founded by former Udaan executives, secured around $2 million in seed funding before shutting down, while Knot has raised around $5 million. Mumbai-based Zilo has raised around $20 million. Investors were drawn by the possibility that fashion, one of India's largest ecommerce categories, could replicate the explosive growth seen in quick commerce. But unlike groceries, the business has yet to demonstrate a scalable business model.
What makes fashion harder than groceries?
The biggest challenge is that people don't shop for clothes the way they shop for groceries. A customer may buy milk every few days, but a T-shirt or dress is usually an occasional purchase. Even when they do shop, there's no guarantee they'll like the fit, colour or fabric, which leads to far more returns than in grocery delivery. Fashion companies, therefore, have to carry a much wider assortment of products while accepting that many items may sit unsold. Also, with fashion being a low-frequency purchase, generating enough orders to justify the cost of maintaining neighbourhood warehouses and ultra-fast delivery is harder.
Can anyone build a profitable model?
It's harder to achieve profitability in quick fashion because trends change quickly and companies have to constantly refresh their inventory, said Mani Singhal, managing director and co-lead of the Consumer & Retail Practice at Alvarez & Marsal India. Unlike groceries, fashion carries a higher risk of unsold stock and returns, meaning even small increases in these costs can significantly hurt profitability, she noted. Success therefore depends on stocking the right products, selling them at full price and strong repeat purchases.
Incumbents like Myntra and Ajio have several advantages like relationships with brands, a large catalogue of products, an established supply chain and existing customers. They can also limit quick delivery to high-demand products and densely populated neighbourhoods, reducing inventory risk while leveraging their existing ecommerce operations.