Omnichannel retail platform Fynd gets Series C funding from Google

This is Google's second investment in India in four months after Bengaluru-based startup Dunzo in December 2017.

Mumbai-based omnichannel platform for fashion and lifestyle Fynd has raised funding from Google. Closing the Series C round, Kae Capital, IIFL, Singularity Ventures, GrowX, Tracxn Labs, Venture Catalyst, Patni family office, Hong Kong-based Axis Capital, among other angel investors, participated in the funding round.

In December 2017, Google invested $12.3 million in Bengaluru-based personal concierge app Dunzo.

“Fynd has built an impressive, tech-first platform that has tremendous potential to scale within and beyond fashion and India,” Seema Rao, Head of Corporate Development - India, Google, said about the development.

The big find

Fynd had earlier raised a funding round in April 2017 led by IIFL, with participation from New York-based FJ Labs and Silicon Valley-based Rocketship among other existing investors. In a press release, Fynd Co-founder Harsh Shah said,

“Fynd is growing steadily and has managed to seal some exciting partnerships in the past few months. Our vision is to revolutionise the online and offline shopping experience across all channels and customer touch-points. We expect that the capital raised will help us further bolster our growth trajectory.”

Initially incepted as Shopsense Retail Technology Pvt Ltd in 2012, the company pivoted to Fynd in November 2015 with a store-driven commerce approach, without inventory or warehouses.

Fynd claims to have more than 8,000 outlets on board now, and that its inventory integrations enable customers to discover fashion in real-time and know the exact specifications of the products available.

“The Fynd team has consistently demonstrated their ability to listen to the market and build scalable products. They have shown impressive growth and are looking to capture a big opportunity in the O2O (offline to online) segment. We are super excited to have Google join the Fynd family and look forward to working closely to grow the company,” Vidushi Kamani, Venture Partner, Kae Capital, said in the press release.

Founded by Farooq Adam, Harsh Shah, and Sreeraman MG, the O2O platform Fynd directly sources products across various categories including clothing, footwear, jewellery and accessories, from the most prominent brands in the country (through their in-store inventory) and brings them online.

Besides this, Fynd’s in-store product ‘Fynd Store’ helps the brand stores save in-store sales which otherwise are lost due to unavailability of the product. Fynd’s integrated system allows for speedy delivery within four to six hours, and a complete assurance of product quality.

One of its early investors includes Snapdeal’s former CPO Anand Chandrasekharan.

Google’s find

Google has been keen on Indian startups over the past few years through funding and other resources, as part of its programme Google for Entrepreneurs. They also partner with NASSCOM’s 10000 startups programme.

The global tech giant also conducts a launchpad accelerator for startups in India – the fifth edition of which happened in November 2017, when it selected BabyChakra, M.Paani, SocialCops, and Niramai as winners.