Anti e-commerce startup Shopsity secures seed funding, to raise additional $8M soon

Anti e-commerce startup Shopsity has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Sandeep Aggarwal, founder of ShopClues and Droom, and Teruhide Sato, founder of Netprice. Shopsity is an app that displays products available at nearby stores.

The Delhi-based company will deploy funds for expansion, hiring bright talents and spruce-up technology capabilities. Led by Danish Ahmed, ex-CEO of Yebhi.com, Shopsity has already listed thousands of stores from Delhi/NCR, allowing customers to see products selling at Woodland, Redtape, W, Mufti, Nike, Levis and other stores.

Importantly, the company is playing at a convergence of local, social and commerce, creating an experience that will be relevant to millions of users globally. Shopsity is also in talk to raise $8 million Series A from marquee VC firms soon.

Serial entrepreneur and angel investor Sandeep Aggarwal has expressed considerable confidence in the venture. Elaborating on his investment and backing of Shopsity, he says,

Danish is a young entrepreneur with a decade’s leadership experience in consumer internet and fashion retail. His passion and vision for Shopsity is inspiring and very exciting. We met once and decided to invest in the opportunity. Hyperlocal retail is a budding sphere with immense potential that can resolve several gaps in customer service and we believe this team has the best chance at doing it.

According to Danish, e-commerce was efficient but boring and unnatural, while shopping was laborious but fun. Shopsity is trying to bring the convenience of online shopping with the experience of offline shopping.

Recommended read: Yebhi co-founder exits to start ‘anti-e-commerce’ venture Shopsity

The app currently lists multiple designs, latest offers and allows the user to make a shopping list. Danish explains,

Online to offline is going to be a multi-billion dollar space, probably larger than e-commerce. We’ve seen its success in Zomato and Ola, but retail is a much larger industry. Indian fashion retail is a $60 billion industry, yet the way we shop today, is a stumble upon experience. People guess where to go, browse across stores and then don't find a suitable item after spending hours at it. Shopsity aspires to change that.

The company is building an experience that allows users to see what’s selling nearby, including sizes, price and offers, and then decide which store they should go for. Also, unlike online shopping, users get to touch and feel the product, and buy it immediately, which is a far superior experience. Danish concludes,

Offline retail is going through a transformation that will change the way we shop. Shopsity will be at the forefront of this change, aggregating and democratising multi-channel retail, building a future where 70% of shopping is influenced by intelligent, personalised and digital touchpoints.

Besides Shopsity, NCR-based Zakoopi, Fashalot and Bengaluru-based Retale are also operating in the same domain but there’s no market leader at the moment. The biggest challenges for these players are to cater to the non-branded stores, deploying foot soldiers and getting stores catalogue on their platform.

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