Zovi to triple its inhouse design team, will sell internationally this month

Zovi is an online retailer of affordable fashion that started back in 2010. The company was found by Satish Mani, Kavindra Mishra and Sartaj Mehta but it underwent a management shuffle in 2012 when Manish Chopra was roped in as a CEO. Funded by SAIF Partenrs and Tiger Global, Zovi is more of an incubated idea. “The thesis was that we believed and continue to believe that the largest fashion brand in India will be built online,” says Ravi Adusumalli, Managing Partner, SAIF Partners.Growth story

The company was started to build a private label that offers affordable fashion to the Indian consumer. With wide ranging products from apparel to footwear, Zovi has always been an online player and has grown steadly over the past coupLe of years. It has raised $25 million till now and acquired Inkfruit back in 2013 (Inkfruit had itself raised $10 million). Both had common investors in SAIF.

Zovi doesn't compete with players like Flipkart or Snapdeal since it develops, stocks and delivers all its own products. Zovi has inhouse ideation, design, manufacturing and other capabilities. Exact numbers with respect to deliveries hasn't been disclosed but CEO Manish Chopr tells us that growth has been very promising and the momentum is only building. “The company continues to scale quite rapidly and is now growing 10-12% MoM. We believe that the company will continue doing so as we have only scratched the surface,” says Ravi. Traffic wise, Zovi stands at an India Alexa rank of 62 at the time of writing this. The company saw a significant spike in July before starting to taper down again. This might have been result of an ad spend to push up the bar.

The road ahead

Zovi has invested heavily in building the capabilities of its inhouse team. “We rely heavily on our in house design team which we plan to ramp up three times in the current year,” says Manish. Zovi has a team strength of more than 200 of which around 25% would be design. Zovi's acquisition of Inkfruit had helped in infusing a different flavour initially.

Another big news from Zovi's stable is that the company intends to sell internationally starting this month. “We did an internal study and found that there is a huge demand for occasion led ethnicwear from the Indian diaspora in the international market. There is a gap and we are in a good position to cater to it,” says Manish. Zovi would start with US this month and then enter UK, West Asia and Australia by the end of year.

Zovi will also be raising more funds to fuel the international growth. Talking about the future, Manish says that growth is the only thing in mind. Their investors are also confident and Ravi says, “We plan to continue funding the company and have no plans for an exit in the near future. There is little reason that the company can't grow 10X from here.”

Website: Zovi