WaterBridge Ventures, which is an early-stage venture capital fund, has now invested around INR 7 crore in the ShoeKonnect. Which is a B2B marketplace startup for the global footwear industry. Some of the existing investor’s Info Edge also participated in the pre-series A round by investing INR 4 crore.
The raised funds will now be going to be used to deploy for the aggressive growth in the footwear segment. Soon the startup will also enter into the B2B fashion and lifestyle space. According to the startup, last month. The ShoeKonnect crossed around INR 100 crore in the annualized GMV. And is even currently growing at an average of 25% average growth rate month to month basis.
“We have successfully executed the solution in the footwear category, now endeavoring to be the market leader in the fashion and lifestyle space, an $80 billion Indian market opportunity with 50 lakh registered fashion retailers in India,”
Siddharth Vij, co-founder, ShoeKonnect
According to the startup, but its larger vision is to build a global ecosystem of trust for the businesses to trade in a similar space.
WaterBridge revealed that it had been closely following around $80 billion B2B fashion and lifestyle space for a while and believe that it has several characteristics that can be economically and efficiently served by a technology-driven solution.
“Putting all these points together, the only way to serve this market efficiently is to use technology to enable product discovery, match sellers and buyers and enable efficient logistics,”.
Sarbvir Singh, Managing Partner, WaterBridge Ventures
“They have executed successfully in one vertical, they will soon be replicating the business model in other verticals of the fashion industry like apparel and accessories,” said Kitty Agarwal, AVP -Corporate Development, Info Edge (India).
The company which is founded by Chaitanya Rathi, Siddharth Rastogi, Siddharth Vij in the year 2015. But it had secured its first round of INR 95 lacs within a year of starting its operation from the Indian Angel Network. After that Info edge, India comes as a major investor. So, with this new funding round, ShoeKonnect has secured INR 24 crore in total.
