Online fashion market in India seems to be the most exciting segment at the moment and Fashionara.com is very much on the track, says its founder Arun Sirdeshmukh.
The one-year-old Bangalore-based start-up is growing fast and is targeting ₹100 crore revenue in the second year of operation.
Fashionara, Sirdeshmukh's fifth start-up, sells affluent fashion and lifestyle product with average billing size of ₹1,500-₹2,000 per transaction.
Before starting Fashionara, he was the CEO of Reliance Trends, which was also Reliance Retails' new business format.
Prior to that he founded fashion retail brand Indus League and exited the company by selling it to Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Group.
“We have entered the fashion e-commerce space at a right time when the growth looks phenomenal. We aim at becoming one of the top five ecommerce players in the country in the next 3-4 years. We hope to double our revenues in the second year (2015)," Sirdeshmukh said, who has over 20 years of experience in the retail industry.
Fashionara.com competes with players such as Jabong and Myntra. While Jabong and Myntra are pushing sales of its premium products in smaller towns, Fashionara wants to consolidate in metros and turn profitable.
The company, which has reportedly raised $15-20 million from Lightspeed Ventures and Helion Ventures in December last year, is investing a lot on improving consumer experience and has introduced features like tryandbuy.
It provides the service in eight cities and plans to extend that to 20 more. The company claims to have had 43 per cent repeat customers last month.
“This indicates that trust and loyalty is no more a challenge for e-tailers,” Sirdeshmukh added.
With the fashion segment all set to become the largest category for online players, Fashionara is looking at launching more private labels, to expand the international brands from 400 to 1,000 this year and also come out with a user-friendly mobile application.