Early-stage startups Urban Tailor, Twigly, and others raise funding

This week has seen funding announcements being made across sectors. On-demand services and startups relating to foodtech and healthcare have received hefty funding, demonstrating that this year’s funding pace is finally moving ahead.

Urban Tailor

Unitus Seed Fund has announced an undisclosed investment in Bengaluru-based Urban Tailor.

S. Nagesh, founder of TRRAIN (Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India) and former MD, Shoppers Stop, also participated in this investment round.

The company was founded by Vasudevan Thrikkazhippurath, Lavanya Venkatraman and Ashish Singhal in March, 2015. It had raised seed funding from a clutch of angel investors to invest in improving customer experience and marketing.

Urban Tailor provides end-to-end services by aggregating a network of local, small tailoring units.

Urban Tailor Co-founder and CEO, Vasudevan T says, “With the investment from Unitus Seed Fund, we want to now focus on building tailor capacity to undertake more orders per day, innovating on our service offerings such as on-demand alterations, and expanding to more cities.”

How it works

Once a customer chooses the style and pattern and places an order online, the pick-up service collects the fabric and measurement garment from the customer’s doorstep. Finally, the stitched product is checked and delivered to the customer — all within 10 days, with the price point starting at Rs 400, said the company in a statement.

Urban Tailor commenced its operations in March 2015 and is currently offering services across Bengaluru. The company claims to have serviced over 20,000 customers, recording a steady 40 percent month-on-month growth and 52 percent repeat customers.

In this segment, the startup is currently competing with Singapore-based upTailor which handles only men’s clothing.

Twigly

Gurgaon-based Twigly has raised $600,000 seed funding from Tracxn Labs, Hyderabad Angels, FreeCharge Founder Kunal Shah, and Flipkart’s Vice-President of Engineering, Gaurav Bhalotia, among others.

The firm plans to utilise the funds in expanding its kitchen-on-cloud business in Delhi and Bengaluru. In the next 6-10 months, the startup plans to open two new kitchens in Delhi and one in Bengaluru. 

The raised funds will also be used for expansion into other cities and to build a new food brand which will be available online as well as in offline stores.

The foodtech startup, which was founded by Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi in 2015, is currently available as an online kitchen model.

Startups solving similar problems include, Swiggy, Foodpanda and Zomato.

HEAL

Founded in 2012, Mumbai-based healthcare startup HEAL has raised funding from banker Jaspal Bindra and Parth Jindal, son of JSW Group chairman Sajjan Jindal, along with other investors. The investment amount has not been disclosed.

The company, founded by Shayamal Vallabhjee, will use the raised funding to fuel expansion across metros.

The platform promotes a healthy, active lifestyle through the empowerment and education of the therapist and patient. The services rendered by the company include physiotherapy, massage therapy, physical rehabilitation, and workplace health and wellness.

A few other startups from the healthcare segment are MedGenome, GOQii, Chennai-based Attune Technologies, and Welcome Cure, among others.

Qwality

Dairy firm Qwality has also raised Rs 520 crore from investment firm KKR & Co. L.P.

The Delhi-based public-listed company plans to foray into the B2C market and will utilise the funds to boost the business unit. The funds will also be invested in strengthening the milk procurement infrastructure, including cheese, paneer, tetra packs, flavoured milk and yoghurt, among others.

ICICI Securities PD Ltd acted as the financial advisor to Kwality for the transaction.

Conclusion

The food-tech segment has, in the recent past, proved to be a rather challenging ecosystem, leading to the shutdown of a number of players including SpoonJoy, TinyOwl, and Dazo, among others. Although other sectors are attracting a lot of investor interest, it is largely the early-stage startups that are getting a leg up.