Mumbai based Vellvette, a subscription-based women only e-commerce portal has raised $500,000 from early-stage investor India Quotient and angel investors including Siddharth Ladsariya and Nitin Agarwal, according to a new report.
Vellvette would use the money to build a technology platform for its customers who subscribe for ‘sample’ cosmetics. The startup will also build a team to get more samples from global cosmetics brands, reports TechCircle.
Launched by IIM alumni Vineeta Singh and Kasuhik Mukherjee Vellvette allows registered users to shop for beauty products in categories spanning across hair, makeup, body and skincare. The startup also provides useful information around beauty and personal care.
Vellvette offers monthly subscription with Rs 399, and in return it ships a box with three premium beauty product samples. The company collects sample from leading cosmetic and beauty brands like The Body Shop, Guess, Victoria secret, Elizabeth Arden amongst others.
India Quotient, which led the funding round, is an early stage investment fund floated by Seedfund partner Anand Lunia, Madhukar Sinha, Jaydeep Barman and Elizabeth Hapman. It has invested in ventures like iimjobs, Red Quanta and belita.
Venture capitalists are rarely investing in pure play e-commerce ventures any more. Unlike last few years, when hundreds of millions of Venture Capital was poured into companies such as Flipkart and Myntra, the flow has slowed to a trickle. The ones that manage to raise funds are differentiated business models. While there is no more easy money for e-commerce companies, as we had pointed out in an interview with Manoj Kumar, the CEO & Co founder of eDabba, there is no funding crunch for differentiated ecommerce companies.
Last week, Delhi based Valyoo Technologies, the e-commerce company which runs LensKart, BagsKart, WatchKart and JewelKart, had raised nearly $10 million from UTV founder Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures Limited including IDG Ventures India.
