Binny Bansal leads $1 Mn round in Masaba Gupta’s fashion brand

Flipkart former group CEO and Chairman Binny Bansal has led $1 million investment round in House of Masaba, a luxury fashion brand founded by movie actress Neena Gupta’s daughter and fashion designer Masaba Gupta.

The investment round also witnessed the participation of investors including Purple Style Labs, Apoorva Patni of Patni Group, and Apurva Salarpuria of Salarpuria group.

Masaba of House is ten years old brand, which claimed to have achieved profitability in 2016 with 100% growth.

Masaba Gupta’s firm will use the funds for expansion purpose. The fashion label plans to open more than 50 stores across India focusing on resort, swimwear and affordable occasion wear.

At present, it operates 11 stores across Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Indore, Pune and Bengaluru. It plans to open stores in Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Lucknow by the year-end.

Meanwhile, Binny Bansal has been aggressively backing startups across the segment. Last month, Flipkart former group CEO for the second time had offloaded about 0.33% stake in Flipkart amounting to $76.4 million.

After selling a small portion of his stakes during Flipkart buyout, Binny Bansal had around 3.85% stake in the firm that has now been reduced to 3.52%. During Walmart acquisition, Binny had sold 1,122,433 shares for about $159 million.

Last year after leaving Flipkart, Binny teamed up with former Flipkart executive and Mckinsey consultant Saikiran Krishnamurthy to launch xto10x.

After Flipkart stint, Bansal has backed some notable startups – Acko, SporDraft, SigTuple, and Increff. Among them, Amazon-backed Acko was his biggest bet where he put in $25 million in an individual capacity in $65 million Series C round.

Flipkart former founder has also shifted his base to Singapore.