[Funding alert] Luxury discovery platform Smytten raises $1.5M in pre-Series A from Roots Ventures

Luxury discovery platform Smytten has closed an investment of $1.5 million in its pre-Series A round of funding from Roots Ventures led by Japan Vyas.

Roots Ventures is a multi-stage fund aimed at investing in companies working on products and technology that will meet the demands of the new-age consumer. It counts Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm as one of its anchor investors, and has made seven investments from its maiden fund.

Smytten was founded by ex-Google executive Swagata Sarangi and ex-Unilever executive Siddhartha Nangia. Claiming to be India's largest luxury discovery platform, it lets consumers try, purchase, and interact with the best of premium and handpicked brands and services.

The new investment will be used for scaling up new user acquisition, product innovation, and building multiple touch points for brand discovery and sampling (online and offline).

Talking about the discovery and deeper engagement between consumer and brands, Swagata Sarangi, Co-Founder, Smytten, said, “Smytten addresses a very fundamental gap in the pre-purchase journey of a consumer by giving them the opportunity to try hundreds of products across their lifestyle needs at a negligible cost.”

“We have not only helped millions of consumers to make the right purchase decision, but also have delivered huge efficiencies to our brand partners in terms of their customer acquisition cost and consumer engagement metrics through our platform. For us, delivering the right content and experience on behalf of our brand partners in pre-purchase phase is the key priority,” Swagata said.

With close to two million users from the high earning audience segment today, Smytten hosts 500+ brand partners on its platform across lifestyle categories. Ranging from fragrances, beauty & makeup, male grooming, food & beverages, baby & mother care and wellness products, the startup offers product samples to consumers across many categories to help them make the right purchase decisions. It has sampled more than 2,000 products across categories on the platform and will be delivering more than 10 million samples this year at consumers’ doorsteps.

Improving the brand story

Japan Vyas, Managing Partner, Roots Ventures, says, “Smytten has already gained massive trust from hundreds of brands, ranging from startups to established ones, with their ability to help brands in managing the sampling supply chain, improving their product engagement and brand story with real-time customer feedback while delivering measurable increase in sales. We are looking forward to working with them in this exciting journey.”

Speaking about the startup’s plans for the future, Siddhartha Nangia, Co-founder at Smytten, said: “In the first phase, our focus was primarily on consumers from metros and Tier I towns. In the current phase, we will also be aggressively pursuing opportunities in Tier II towns through an omnichannel approach.”

“We will be building multiple touch points for consumers to discover and experience premium brands before they commit to buy. We have seen massive growth in our user base and brand partnerships in last few months, and look forward to accelerate it further with the funding,” Siddhartha said.

Smytten had earlier raised seed funding led by marquee angel investors like Rajan Anandan, ex-MD of Google India and South East Asia; Anuj Srivastava, Co-founder of Livspace; Rimpal Chawla, ex-MD of Credit Suisse Asset Management India; and some industry veterans.

(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)

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