6Degree, launched in 2014 is one of India’s first fashion talent and tech startup that provides opportunities for fashion professionals to showcase their talent. It unifies individuals related to the fashion domain such as fashion designers, bloggers, brands, models and photographers on a single common platform. The fashion tech firm aims to connect like - minded people across the global fashion community. It has very soundly blended technology with fashion to create a portal suitable for networking, associations and consultation.
The Fashion Week market is valued at more than 1 Trillion Dollar market with more than 700 fashion weeks taking place globally. With two major players in this market, Fashion GPS and Talenthouse (Anil Ambani as one of their investors), 6Degree is slowly carving its place to be India’s top Fashion Talent & Tech marketplace.
Last year they raised seed round from Centre for Incubation and Business Acceleration(CIBA) a Department Of Science & Technology backed incubation centre.
After covering good ground and generating most of their revenue from offline business, now the founders are focused on using technology to help their startup scale and enable the fashion world to be more connected. The startup was founded by Nikhil Hegde and Amit Bhardwaj in August 2014.
In an Interaction With Sujata Sangwan of BWDisrupt, Amit Bhardwaj, Co-Founder and COO, 6Degree, Shares His Startup Journey from Inception to Till Now.
About Startup6Degree is a theory that signifies that - “everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person in the world, so that a chain of "a friend of a friend" statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.” This concept falls-in-line with what we intend to build for the fashion industry through our startup. 6Degree is a “Fashion Talent & Tech Platform” & we offer services to the entire Fashion Ecosystem. We help fashion professionals connect with right individuals / organizations and partners to further build their brand and business growth.
Unique features/services We have more than 11 Fashion Weeks as our B2B clients and more than 2000 fashion professionals as our B2C clients. The entire fashion ecosystem is our customer. Out of our research we have identified more than 45 different segments in this market. As a startup we are currently focusing on 3 to 4 key segments, like - Fashion Designers, Fashion Weeks, Stylist and Fashion Influencers.
We offer the following services - 1) Fashion Week Showcase
2) Business of Fashion Services and
3) Fashion Brand Consulting
Differentiation factors We are focusing on using the technology to help our startup scale and enable the fashion world to be more connected by launching 6Degree’sB2B application for Fashion Weeks and organizers. We are betting high on it as conducting a Fashion Week takes a minimum of three months and a lot of coordination between multiple teams. During a Fashion Week, we see thousands of visitors in shows which give us immense opportunity to bring in Technology to have better coordination, planning and guest management. For us customers are fashion weeks and wehad achieved a major milestone by becoming the only company to bring Fashion Designers in India’s top fashion week - Lakme Fashion Week as a Talent partner.
Funding status and Monetization model The initial investment of Rs. 20 lakh was invested in Concept launch at the Lakme Fashion week, in the market research process and in setting up the initial team.
We were recently funded by Indian Angel Network and had raised $200,000 from the investors from Indian Angel Network with Abhishek Agarwal was the lead investor. The funds will be allocated in enhancing our technology and by expanding our reach exponentially. The funds will also be deployed in expanding our bespoke fashion services and launching first-of-its kind Enterprise Solutions for Fashion Weeks.
We work on a revenue share model with our partners & customers. Of the last financial year, 2015, we were operating at an average of 20 - 30% operating margin and expect it to increase by another 5% for the current financial year.
Challenges facedWe have faced challenges in partnering with international fashion weeks as India is known majorly for providing software as a service and not fashion services globally. To address this, we are sharing our proof-of-concept and proven services with international organizations operating in India markets.
Market size and opportunitiesThe fashion business market is currently valued at more than 1 trillion dollars globally and growing exponentially. This industry has more than 45 different categories of professionals / business types which come with its list of opportunities.
Future plans6Degree’s revenues surpassed 1 Crore mark in just 7 months of its launch. By the end of last financial year we had a top-line of INR 1 Cr and expect to grow current business size to 4 times in this financial year. With an early-mover's advantage, we have already partnered with elite fashion weeks such as Lakme Fashion Week and other in India, securing us domestic market leadership.
While consolidating our position in India, we are now beginning operations in international markets in the midst of global competition. We are sharing our proof-of-concept and proven services with international organizations operating in India markets. We are also looking forward to the 6Degree’s b2b app which is a priority on our product road map.
