India’s leading Youth Icon, Rannvijay Singh backs fashion styling app
Istyleyou (ISY), by investing an undisclosed amount and endorsing the brand. Rannvijay Singh, known for hosting the famous Roadies show, is one of the ‘most followed’ on social media, and his style inspires millions of youth in India.
Founded in Nov 2015 by Pallav Modi, Amit Kejriwal and Vinayak Khanijo. Istyleyou is a fashion styling platform, where users can interact with fashion stylists and also know what is trending as per their own style profile. Even though they are still in the early stage, 10,000+ users have interacted with 25+ fashion stylists, and accessed 5000+ styles and 1 lakh curated products. Their core focus has been on building a scalable product that their users love.
Rannvijay instantly connected with the Idea of styling, as he understands the pulse of the Indian youth. He knows that fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of e-commerce in India, which is projected to be a $30 billion market by 2020. He found Istyleyou’s business model very exciting and believes it has the potential to disrupt the market.
An enthused Rannvijay said “ISY is a unique concept, they have rock solid team. Now its time to rock and roll.”
IStyleYou, run by Uninext Solutions Pvt Ltd, also gets product recommendations from e-commerce sites. The app gives each customer a personal stylist for free, and helps him or her find the clothes they love. Their target audience – the youth and the working professionals have a difficult time in putting together a wardrobe that is perfectly suited to both - their individual choices as well as the current fashion runways globally. And to add more fuel to this fire, they feel overwhelmed by the million choices screaming across from every social and fashion platform!
According to Pallav, CoFounder ISY – “We are super excited to have Rannvijay to be a core part of the ISY team. He will play a crucial role in making ISY a leading youth brand.”
Said an excited Vinayak, CoFounder ISY, “We hope to leverage his popularity and fan following in expanding the need and reach of our brand.”
ISY uses intelligent algorithms of man and machine; to help this audience achieve extremely high levels of personalized styling, married to current fashion trends. The stylists are highly curated and are onboarded after multiple rounds of interviews that test their knowledge and experience in the fashion world. While Delhi and Bangalore seemed to have the maximum number of users of this app, there seems to be a paradigm shift in the user base from the metros to the tier 2 cities as well. And unsurprisingly, there are more women than men, but the ratio seems to be shifting there as well. Fashion is an art, with starkly opposite and subjective choices – all of which cannot be captured by technology alone. But yes, a right combination of technology and human intervention and appeal, can lead to a perfect styling recommendation platform.
In Feb 2016, ISY had received around INR 67 lakhs from Gurugram-based GHV Accelerator, on joining their unique and bespoke accelerator program. Recently, two portfolio companies of GHV – Applop and MyTaxiIndia bagged additional rounds of funding. One of their startups in the laundry space was in the news for operational breakeven.
According to Vikram Upadhyaya, Chief Mentor and Evangelist at GHV Accelerator, “This team has cleared the TESTPoC criteria – my personal mantra for a startup to both - sustain and scale. A highly self-driven and committed team; they are always open to different points of view and very adaptive. It has been and will continue to be a very interesting journey with them. I wish them luck.”
