The latest entrant to the start-up ecosystem,
Glam Studios is all set to revolutionize the way the beauty industry works in India. The company has just raised an Angel Round of INR 2cr from Pradeep Mirani and existing investors (Aqeel Ahmed, Anand Ladsariya and Nitin Agarwal). The round was lead by I Plan Wealth Management. Glam Studios had earlier raised seed funding of 30 lacs in January 2016, which it used to launch and scale up to 30 salons and create a cloud based salon management system.
The company is eying to organize the budget salon industry by creating a tech driven brand of affordable salons through aggregation, standardization and brand association. The salons are bookable for customers through the website and an upcoming mobile application. The chain currently has 30 operational salons and is running high on its spate of success, having serviced 6000 clients and sold more than a 1000 yearly memberships in its first six months of operations. “We have received an amazingly encouraging response both from customers and salons owners” said Sadiya Naseem, the founder who is an ex leadership team member of Oyorooms.
The core and cofounding team comprises Darakhshan Husain, Feeroz Akhter and Ajay Bansal. The team altogether carries 40 years of experience in the start-up and ecommerce domain. “All of us in the team share a vision of making high quality beauty services affordable and available to a customer next door and plan to have 500 plus salons on our tech backed platform by the end of this financial year” Sadiya adds.
While there are almost 16 beauty salon chains operating in India currently, almost all of them partner with people who can make minimum one time investments of at least Rs. 20 Lacs or more and operate in the premium segment. Hence, budget salon owners and budget beauty customers have totally been neglected till now. On the other hand, salons even as small as 500sqft can become Glam Studios without any expenditure at all. The company not only brings about aesthetic changes to the salons but also trains staff and automates their entire processes, thus bringing about a radical change to their operations and management while increasing their visibility and customer base.
