Flipkart expands fashion portfolio with investment into USPL
USPL is a youth-oriented fashion brand, and the investment from Flipkart is expected to bring greater synergies between the two companies.
India’s leading ecommerce marketplace Flipkart continues to make strategic bets in the fashion apparel space with the latest strategic investment into USPL, a youth focused fashion brand.
Flipkart has invested an undisclosed amount in the Series F funding round of USPL, which also saw participation from existing investor Accel Partners, according to a statement.
Prior to this, Flipkart has already made two investments into two predominantly offline retail fashion brands – Arvind Fashion and Aditya Birla Fashion.
According to Flipkart, it will work closely with the USPL team to deepen product offerings on its platform. This investment will significantly step-up the online strategy of USPL by strengthening the existing long-standing engagement between USPL and Flipkart Group, the company said..
Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy
Founded in 2015 has its presence in over 750 offline retail outlets across 100 plus in the country and is growing at 40-50 percent year-on-year. The key highlight of its portfolio is Virat Kohli’s Wrogn and Kriti Sanon’s Ms Taken.
According to Flipkart, Wrong is one of the fastest growing men’s casual wear brands in India at scale and has been among the leading brands on Myntra over the last few years.
On the development, USPL Founder and CEO Anjana Reddy said, “Over the years, USPL has been the home to some of India’s best-known fashion brands for youth. The last few months have provided a great opportunity for us to consolidate our market leadership among homegrown brands catering to the youth and expand our market share.”
She further said, “Post pandemic recovery has been great for us and we are at ~80 percent of pre-COVID-19 sales. During the time when the world is moving towards omni-channel retailing, we can significantly strengthen our online strategy by working with Flipkart and Myntra, the two prominent players in the Indian online fashion space.”
On the investment into USPL, Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said, “It is our constant endeavour to offer our customers a wide range of products that meet their sensibilities. USPL’s unique brands, backed by celebrity endorsements, have a strong appeal for the young fashion-driven Indian consumer.”
Mahendran Balachandran, Partner, Accel India said “Our faith in USPL has been validated with this new investment. This transaction reflects strong synergy potential between USPL and Flipkart Group.”
Edited by Kanishk Singh