Fynd, a fashion e-commerce platform has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Messenger head Anand Chandrasekaran in an extended pre-series A round. This round for the company was held in November, where it grabbed capital from Kae Capital, and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal. Other active participants included Rajiv Mehta, CEO of Arvind Sports and Ramakant Sharma, Co-founder of Livspace and former VP at Myntra.
Fynd is an online shopping platform run by Shopsense Technologies Pvt Ltd. The foundation for the same was laid back in 2013 by the trio — Farooq Adam, Harsh Shah, and Sreeraman MG. The business model revolves around sourcing products from nearby stores in order to minimize the delivery time.
The category of products for the portal includes clothing, footwear, jewellery and accessories from various brands across India. The platform provides significant options to its customers including one-touch mobile payment feature, try and return back policy, 24-hour delivery etc. Further, Fynd sources its inventory data from over 8,000 stores in cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Amritsar, Guwahati, and Kochi.
The capital raised would be channelized towards enhancing tech infrastructure with an aim to reach optimum delivery time. The strategic force behind the raise being partnering with key industry stakeholders to gain much needed mentorship and guidance to scale operations. Further, the company plans to increase inventory up to 10 lakh products in coming 6 months.
Harsh Shah, Co-founder of Fynd commented on the fundraising round as under:
Early last year, we completed the preliminary testing of our business model and were scaling up our business from Mumbai to nationwide. At that time we realized the need of expertise from industry majors who can actually guide us in building our product and also give us better industry exposure along with continuous feedback on our efforts.
Recently, the company partnered with Ola to provide an in-cab shopping and delivery experience to its customers. Moreover, the Mumbai-based company launched an omnichannel product ‘Fynd Store’ in a bid to connect online and offline retail channels with benefits of cross-selling and branding.
Anand Chandrasekaran, the prime investor for Fynd has been an active investor past six months. Other recent fashion investments made by him include Buttercups and Wooplr.
