Wooplr Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which runs an eponymous fashion discovery platform for women has raised $8 million in a series B round of funding led by Sistema Asia Fund. Amereus Group and existing investor Helion Ventures also participated in the round.
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.
Prior to this Wooplr had raised an undisclosed investment from a cluster of investors in March last year. The startup had also raised Rs 30 crore (~$5 million) in funding in 2015, from Helion Venture Partners. It had also raised seed funding worth $225,000 from a group of individual angel investors.
The startup was founded in 2013 by four former McAfee employees–Arjun Zacharia, Praveen Rajaretnam, Soumen Sarkar and Ankit Sabharwal.
Wooplr pivoted from a hyperlocal discovery platform to a fashion community and e-commerce platform by partnering with brands and social media influencers or key opinion leaders (KLOs). The platform helps customers shop better based on location, occasion, interests and friends.
It allows users to upload details of their purchases. This helps their friends to discover places and shop from there. For businesses, it provides a single-point mobile application to manage their marketing, community building and sales.
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.
In fashion e-commerce, Wooplr competes with Tiger Global-backed Limeroad (AM Marketplaces Pvt. Ltd.) and Roposo (Relevant E-Solutions Pvt. Ltd.), Sequoia India-baced Voonik Technologies Pvt. Ltd., among others.