By: Indian online lingerie retailer, Clovia raises $4 million funding from Singularity Ventures and an Angel Investor. The Angel is Ravi Dharival, the CEO of Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. The fund came from these new investors and some older ones as well. Presently, the Purple Panda Fashions Pvt Ltd runs the lingerie e-tailer.
The Noida based startup was founded by Pankaj Vermani, Neha Kant, Suman Choudhry, and Aditya Chaturvedi in 2013. Earlier known as Cloe, the lingerie retailer manufactures its own products and sells through its online platform Clovia.com and several other retail partners.
Clovia announced the news on Tuesday. Pankaj Vermani, the CEO of the firm released an official statement. He quotes, “We are excited to welcome new investors in Clovia. We look forward to a long-term relationship with them.” As per the management, now, Clovia is going to use these funds for technological development, marketing, and expansion of sales channels.
The lingerie marketplace currently clashes with IDG Ventures, and Kalaari Capital backed Zivame, and Orios Venture Partners backed PrettySecrets. Clovia has its own designers and manufacturing units. Zivame, on the other hand, started off as a lingerie marketplace for other brands but now sells its private line of lingerie. OPresttyScrets has its own products as well.
Clovia had earlier raised $4.7 million from IvyCap Ventures in 2015. Zurich-based Mountain Partners were the investors in the seed round.
Clovia.com currently claims website visits of over 1.5 million and sales of 250,000 per month. Clovia’s 85 percent of sales is from its online platform, and the rest comes from partner stores. So if these talks are fruitful, the company is going to focus and expand its offline sales channels.
Clovia was set up in 2013 to address the under-serviced intimate wear segment in India. Clovia designs and manufactures its own products. Using smart technology/analytics, it monitors the sales trends and patterns on its website and manages its inventory accordingly, thus reducing the operational costs.
