Voonik, an online fashion store has raised $5 million in latest Series A round of funding from Sequoia Capital and Seedfund. Earlier, the company had raised Rs. 2.5 crore from Seedfund.
With the newly raised funding, the company is now looking to enhance its technology for better recommendation of products and to improve persoonalization based on user preference.
The Bangalore-based company was founded in 2013 by Sujayath Ali and Navaneetha Krishnan and it claims to India’s first stylist-handpicked apparel store. The app acts more or less like a personal stylist which pick best clothes for the customer based on the customer’s style preferences.
Signing-up and going through a short visual quiz on the platform reveals your body type and style preferences to them. Then the user starts getting instant recommendations from stylists on what will suit you, how to wear them, and what to pair them with. If user like an item, he/she can purchase it.
It offers choice of products from multiple stores on its platform and lets consumers shop in a single checkout. It has over half a million products in its catalog. This makes it one of the largest stores of its kind offering apparel, accessories and footwear as well as beauty products.
Voonik also has a desktop website but it considers their website as a secondary channel compared to their mobile app. While the satrtup isn’t not actively focussing on acquiring desktop users, plans for a Myntra-styled shut down are also off the charts. Their mobile app has a better UI and UX compared to the desktop version, as the app comes with more features.
Since the launch of its mobile app last year, it has been downloaded more than 1 million times. It was the second most downloaded fashion app in May. On an average, it witnesses about 2,500 purchases daily from about 1,500 unique customers.
The company currently has four stylists on board. It has about 30 people working on product and engineering while other 30 people working in support and operations.
Sujayath Ali, CEO and Co-founder of Voonik, said,
With the ubiquitous smartphone getting cheaper, along with better connectivity, we believe mobile is the future of commerce. With this funding, we will be focussing on innovations that would enhance our mobile platform and provide an unmatched shopping experience to our users. We are glad to partner with Sequoia and Seedfund, and are certain that their combined experience and knowledge will help us build a strong company.
Commenting on the investment, Shailendra J Singh, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said,
Voonik is a next generation business model, that has created a “lean marketplace” for fashion that allows users to discover personalized apparel from dozens of other e-commerce sites. So people can shop on the Voonik app and mix and match from styles and SKUs across other sites like Jabong, Fashionara, Zovi, and so on.
