Shopatplaces.com, an online marketplace which sells ethnic and traditional goods tied to famous/historical places, operated by High City Retail Pvt. Ltd., has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in its seed round from Indian Angel Network (IAN).
Although the amount of investment has not been disclosed officially, it is speculated to be around Rs. 1 crore to Rs. 3 crore. IAN member B Hari led this round of investment and has joined the board of company.
The company will expand its offering by introducing new categories and is also planning to make its presence in all 29 states of India. It will use fund to enhance its technology, hire new people, increase marketing efforts and meet working capital requirements.
Founded in 2012 by Sherfur Rehman and Zuhaib Khan, Shopatplaces is focused on Apparel and Accessories category right now. The company also offers curated Jewelry, Bags, Shoes, Home Decor and Fragrances to its customers. Come next month, it will introduce a new Personal Care category on its platform.
B. Hari, Lead investor in this round, commenting on company’s growth strategy, said,
At IAN we were extremely excited with Zuhaib and Sherfur’s passion, enthusiasm, and business acumen to build a great company. And combined with Shopatplaces’ scalable online experience to well thought through customer base. There was tremendous investor interest at IAN & the company raised monies in literally minutes.
Zuhaib Khan, Co-founder of Shopatplaces said,
IAN’s investment will enable us to further build our Product Portfolio and Service. We aim to delight our customers with the widest range of high quality products, sourced directly from the places they are created at. Moving ahead, we plan to improve Marketing to reach our target customer segment and scale up the Technology Front-end and Back-end Infrastructure. We aim to be the Top of the Mind recall for the customers when they think of locally crafted products from any city. On the technology front, an app will be rolled out for customers to shop on the go.
As per the report from The Boston Consulting Group, Indian e-commerce is estimated to reach $60-70 billion by 2020. So, no wonder many companies are trying to seize the opportunity by tapping into unexplored and niche market and Shopatplaces is one of them.
