Fashion and lifestyle ecommerce portal The Label Life raises Rs 20 Cr from Kalpavriksh
Kalpavriksh, Centrum’s PE fund, invests in online lifestyle brand The Label Life.
The Label Life, an internet-first lifestyle brand of contemporary fashion, accessories and home décor garnered Rs 20 crore in funding from Kalpavriksh, Centrum’s PE fund. The company’s investors include Mithun Sacheti, Co-founder of CaratLane; and Haresh Chawla.
Preeta Sukhtankar, Founder and CEO, The Label Life, says,
Kalpavriksh’s team has a deep understanding of supply chain, operations and customer engagement, so we have a lot to benefit from this partnership. With Kalpavriksh’s investment, the brand’s immediate plans are to aggressively expand the label, double the SKUs, explore an omni-channel strategy and focus on collaborations and partnerships.
Founded in November 2015, The Label Life retails home decor and fashion styled by Sussanne Khan, Malaika Arora and Bipasha Basu. For their fashion arm, their target customers are women between the ages of 23 and 45 years, who reside in the top ten cities of the country.
In that regard, the company houses designs modeled for urban Indian woman. They release capsule collections through the month, accompanied by style-guides to assist the customer further. For example, with its latest capsule collection of nine products, it demonstrated 40 different looks.
Giri Krishnaswamy, Chief Investment Officer, Kalpavriksh said “Consumer-centric businesses are at an inflection point in India and The Label life is well positioned to capitalise on this opportunity. The brand has demonstrated growth through innovation and strong customer engagement simultaneously with good unitary economics.”
Niraj Shah from Kalpavriksh will be joining the board of The Label Life, working closely with the team to provide strategic support in supply chain, retail operations and guidance in the next phase of profitable growth.
Currently clocking Rs 2 crore in monthly revenues, the company has served 70,000 customers so far. Preeta tells YourStory that the newly raised funds will now be deployed toward ushering in the next phase of their growth, by increasing the SKU count, bringing in more efficiency in their supply chain management, talent acquisition and lastly, making an even more robust technology stack, as it is all done in-house.
Kalpavriksh is Centrum’s maiden PE fund under Centrum Alternatives LLP which invests in high growth unlisted companies in consumer, education, technology, healthcare, and wellness sectors. The Label Life is the second investment by Kalpavriksh this year. Earlier, it had invested in H.E.A.L, which is a Mumbai-based chain of physiotherapy centres.
The Label Life has also fostered collaborations with designers like Falguni Shane Peacock and Payal Singhal. And since the company will turn two this month, they are celebrating by slipping in thoughtful gifts with every order. "We are also launching a brand film that tells our stylist-led story with style editors Sussanne Khan, Malaika Arora and Bipasha Basu. 2018 will see new categories, new verticals, and new collaborations, which we know our discerning and growing customer base will love," Preeta reveals.
At present, $7-9 billion of the $70 billion Indian fashion market is digitally influenced. Majority of this change has been influenced by social media and smartphones, with as many as 85 percent of online apparel shoppers preferring to shop and browse on their phones.
In the last five years the online fashion industry has become very attractive even to traditionally offline players like Zara, which went online earlier this year in India. According to experts, increased accessibility along with new players expanding the online market, will result in over 50 percent sales coming from tier II cities by 2020.