Kids’ fashion brand Hopscotch raises $25 Mn fresh round after 4 years

Online kids’ fashion brand Hopscotch has raised $25 million in what appears to be Series D round from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin's investment arm EE Capital, Lionrock Capital, Rise Capital, RPG Ventures and IIFL Seed Ventures Fund.

The Mumbai and New York-based startup had last raised $13 million in Series C round led by Eduardo Saverin in February 2016.

According to an ET report, the latest round also saw participation from angel investors including co-founder of Diapers.com, Wei Yan and others. Currently, Yan is a partner at Rise Capital.

With the fresh round, the eight-year-old firm plans to move its brand beyond its own platform to other marketplaces. As per the report, the company has already started to promote its brand on Amazon India.

Last year, e-commerce giants Amazon and Flipkart were reportedly in talks with Hopscotch to acquire a minority stake in the company. However, the talks didn’t materialize for some unknown reasons.

Founded by Diapers.com’s former director Rahul Anand, Hopscotch focuses on kids-focused lifestyle products that offer significantly higher margins and bigger basket size. According to Anand, the company sells 2.5 units per shipment with an average basket size of Rs 1,500 and it helped the company to turn its losses into EBITA profitability.

Since its inception, Hopscotch has garnered 3 million mothers transacting on the platform. The company further claims to record a majority of its revenue from repeat customers and it launches 400 styles every day.

Hopscotch is one of the oldest players in kid’s fashion space and competes with deep-pocketed  FirstCry, Lilliput, Giny & Jony among others. Earlier this year, FirstCry became the first unicorn in the segment after raising a $300 million round from SoftBank. In 2016,  FirstCry had acquired Mahindra's baby care franchisee BabyOye’s for Rs 362 crore.