Fashion discovery platform Fashalot secures Pre Series A round

Location-based O2O fashion discovery platform Fashalot has raised an undisclosed amount in its Pre-Series A funding round led by Capillary Technologies. The round also witnessed participation from Whiteboard Capital, including existing investors YourNest Angel Fund, Rajul Garg.

The company plans to use fund towards updating its technology, hiring more talent and scaling-up its user base. It also aims to strengthen its position against other players in this segment such as StyleDotMe, ShopKick, Fashionove, et al.

Launched in 2015 by Amit Koshal, Rishi Batra and Amit Sharma, Fashalot is an O2O (online-to-offline) fashion store discovery platform that connects shoppers to brick and mortar retail stores in their neighborhood. By using its native application brands can increase footfall and engagement in their stores.

“We believe in Fashalot’s future of replacing traditional modes of marketing such as print and media. The fashion retail industry in India is pegged at $100+ billion, in which 98% of sales happen offline. Besides, around $3 billion a year is spent on various marketing channels. Fashalot’s use of rich data customer analytics by capturing shopper’s intent to shop could help capture a substantial part of this market,” said Aneesh Reddy, co-founder & CEO, Capillary Technologies in a press statement.

The organized retail in India comprises over $46 billion of the total market and does over 200 million transactions every month. To solidify its position, Fashalot targets to reach 1 million transactions on a monthly basis through its app. It also claims to have reached up to 5% of store sales with some partners.

Besides providing communication between retailers and shoppers to discover in-store sales, Fashalot also offers deals and discounts on the latest collections. It also has loyalty programme F-Cash.

Currently, the platform is operational in Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru and has over 5,000 plus fashion stores.

Other players in the online-to-offline fashion segment include Fynd, which had raised $500,000 (Rs 3.3 crore) from seed investment platform Venture Catalysts in its Series A round during March this year. Previously, it had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from former Snapdeal executive Anand Chandrasekaran and others. Last year, ShopsUp secured $1 million in seed funding from two individual investors.