Fast fashion brand Newme raises $18 Mn in Series A

Gen-z focused fast fashion brand Newme has raised $18 million in its Series A round led by Accel with participation from existing investors including Fireside Ventures and AUM Ventures.

The Bengaluru-based startup had raised $5.4 million in January this year. It also raised an undisclosed round from investors such as Aum Ventures, 2am VC and All In Capital in November 2022.

Newme will utilize new funds to expand its omnichannel presence and strengthen supply-chain technology, the company said in a press release.

Founded by Shivam Tripathi, Sumit Jasoria, Vinod Naik, Newme currently sells self-branded clothing across both online and offline outlets.

Newme opened its first retail store in Bengaluru in July last year and has expanded to 5 new cities with 6 retail outlets. In the next 12-18 months, Newme aims to open 40-50 stores across 20 key cities, including underserved regions like Guwahati, Shillong and Imphal.

Over the past 18 months, the company claims to have witnessed around 9X growth in revenue and has projected at least three-fold growth this year.

Fast fashion brands have been able to corner decent funding in the past couple of years. For context, omnichannel ethnic wear brand Libas raised $18 million in its maiden funding round. Other notable names are DSLR, French Crown and Virgio.

It’s important to note that the fast fashion domain attracting venture capital money isn’t a new phenomenon. During 2012-17, investors funded several fast fashion companies including Zovi, Freecultr, Voonik, and YepMe among others but eventually none of them survived against the Western brands, which still enjoy a strong presence in the country.

Nevertheless, there is certainly a scope for building a company like Shein which turned into a behemoth. And it would be exciting to see whether such a company will be built from business behemoths like Reliance, Tata and Birla, or upcoming and existing startups.