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Premium brand startup Smytten raises $1.5 million from Roots Ventures – ETtech.com


Premium brand startup Smytten raises $1.5 million from Roots Ventures Premium and luxury brands startup Smytten has raised $1.5 million in a new funding round from Roots Ventures.

This will take the Gurugram-based firm’s total fundraising to around $3 million, since inception in 2015. Roots Ventures, with a corpus of Rs 300 crore, had backed Smytten in its seed round as well.

Smytten’s business model involves partnering with premium and luxury brands to provide them with a targeted sampling strategy in India.

Unlike larger e-commerce players in the segment, such as Nykaa and Myntra, Smytten is positioned more as a brand discovery and experience platform than a pure-play e-commerce site.

“The amount raised will be used to expand our user base, infrastructure and our offline footprint,” said Smytten’s cofounder Swagata Sarangi. “The next big thing is information plus experience. Our focus is on brand and customer interaction rather than e-commerce,” he said.

The company provides one million monthly sampling orders to consumers from a warehouse in Ahmedabad, Sarangi said, adding it plans to open warehouses in Gurugram and Bangalore soon.

Smytten had raised an undisclosed amount from angel investor Rajan Anandan in 2016 and received $200,000 in seed money, led by Rimpal Chawla, ex-MD of Credit Suisse Asset Management India and Livspace cofounder and CEO, Anuj Srivastava, a few years ago.

Apart from sampling, Smytten also runs an e-commerce platform for more than 500 premium brands. “We are clocking on an average 1.5 lakh monthly orders of Rs 1,500 each, with a monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) of $1 million,” Sarangi told ET.

The consumption slowdown has not really impacted this segment, he said, with the festive gifting season providing a 50% spike in business so far. Smytten is on track to grow four times year-on-year, the company claimed.

“We were focusing on metros, but tier 2 towns are growing exponentially. Last year, they were less than 20% but have grown to contribute 35% of the business this year,” he said.

Some of the best performing categories on the app are perfumes, skincare and wellness, with some brands seeing more than a 10% increase in purchases, both on its app and through their respective online and offline channels.





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