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Virgio, a fashion tech startup founded by former Myntra chief executive Amar Nagaram, has raised $37 million in a Series-A funding round co-led by Prosus Ventures, Accel and Alpha Wave. The funds will go towards further technology development and hiring.
Founded in 2022, Virgio’s model uses technology throughout the design, manufacturing and purchasing processes, to streamline the entire fashion lifecycle and enable real-time offerings. The firm is focused on Gen-Z and late Millennials.
Mukesh Bansal, Kunal Shah, Binny Bansal, Bhavish Aggarwal, Vidit Aatrey, Sriharsha Majety, Mekin Maheswari and Sameer Nigam are among the angel investors who participated in previous rounds.
“Traditionally, the fashion industry has operated on depth and discount models,” said Amar Nagaram, CEO and Founder of Virgio. “Virgio is pioneering the test and scale method, making runway fashion accessible and affordable for all consumers, while eliminating excess inventory for manufacturers.”
Virgio is building a fashion tech platform that will allow designers to access consumer preferences in real time. It is also envisioning a tech-led network of factories which enable designers to quickly build prototypes, get consumer feedback, and scale up production.
“There is a large underserved market for branded apparel in India currently. For example, for women, only 25 per cent of fashion is branded apparel,” said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of India Investments, Prosus Ventures. “We are confident in Virgio’s tech-first model and believe the startup’s expert founding team is uniquely positioned to capture a large opportunity in India’s fashion industry.”
Virgio said that its model has condensed the 8-10-month lead time to just one month, while its app has over 100,000 downloads. Seeing early success on its Singles’ Day sale last month, between November 11-13, Virgio offered over 2,000 new styles. It saw over 1 million new users on the platform during the event, in addition to over 20,000 daily active users.
Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel said India has a robust manufacturing base and is one of the largest exporters of textiles globally. “We believe the time is ripe for this group to rapidly adopt digital practices, given that we’re coming out of the pandemic that’s accelerated tech adoption across the board,” said Mitra.
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