Wooplr, a social fashion platform, has raised $8 million in its latest funding round, led by Sistema Asia Fund, the proprietary fund floated by Russian conglomerate Sistema JSFC. Also, the company saw participation from Singapore-based Amereus Group and their existing investor Helion Ventures.
Talking about their investment, Dhruv Kapoor, managing director, Sistema Asia Fund Advisory said,
SAF’s philosophy is to back established or emerging leaders in technology, technology-enabled and consumer brand businesses. In Wooplr, we found an emerging leader in the socially driven commerce space with its lean marketplace model and high virality quotient.
Wooplr, based out of Bangalore, was founded in 2012 by Soumen Sarkar, Arjun Zacharia, Praveen Rajaretnam, and Ankit Sabharwal. It is a social shopping platform that allows people to recommend their favorite products and stores in the city and share it with their social circles.
Arjun Zacharia, co-founder of Wooplr, said,
Over 2015 we have built the entire backend for brands where they can use the platform to showcase the inventory with them. Once the transaction is completed the brand ships the product while the customers can track it on our website. We are a marketplace and do not hold any inventory.
The platform enables people to discover new products from local stores around them through recommendations from friends & other social influencers. Based upon the shared content and various other parameters like location and interests, it presents a personalised, curated feed of fashion products to help users get to know about fashion products in local stores.
It eworks with private labels of various marketplaces such as Koovs and Nykaa and standalone fashion brands like FabAlley. The platform currently has over 200 brand partnerships. It has 10,000 fashion influencers such as beauty bloggers and stylists, and sees 60-65% traffic coming in from the app while the rest comes through its mobile website.
Last year, the company had secured an undisclosed investment from former Snapdeal and current Messenger exec Anand Chandrasekeran. Prior to that, it had raised funding from Astarc Ventures. It the last four funding rounds, it has raised over $4 million.
