ClearDekho Becomes the First Retail Brand in India to Raise Funds from SOSV-MOX, Asia’s Leading Mobile Accelerator
Uttar Pradesh-based budget eyewear brand ClearDekho has raised funds from SOSV-MOX China Accelerator. This is the global fund’s first funding in an Indian eyewear retail startup. They look to work with ClearDekho for a range of industry first cross-border partnerships.
ClearDekho which raised its last round in June is aggressively growing at a rapid rate of 40% m-o-m fuelled by the massive demand for qualitative & affordable eyeglasses in tier 2 & tier 3 cities/budget segments.
Established by Shivi Singh and Saurabh Dayal in 2016, ClearDekho is looking at using this fund & its expertise in disrupting the multi-billion dollar eyewear market by capturing 75% of the untapped mass market in tier 2 & tier 3 cities & towns across India.
Shivi Singh, Co-Founder, ClearDekho said, “There is currently just 1 optical store for every 70,000 Indians. This leads to massive losses in productivity with India losing almost $37B in productivity every year as 250 mn people struggle to see everyday. This to be is a shocking gap that needs to be bridged and that’s where ClearDekho steps in. We firmly believe that the problem of access needs to be solved for this market, access in terms of cost, availability & quality. This is the problem we as a team are looking to solve and are honored to have SOSV China join us in doing so. This is an exciting chapter in our journey, we are excited to working with them for building scalable & sustainable business through cross-border relationships.”
William Bao Bean, Partner SOSV & Managing Director MOX, said “Our platform has been dedicated to enable great ideas become scalable solutions impacting the community at large, we see ClearDekho as the perfect embodiment of that. We love the passion & expertise the team brings and are excited to see our partnership solve the problem of affordable, qualitative eyewear not just in India but to any consumer, the world over who needs it.”
SOSV — The Accelerator VC — is a $300M venture fund operating global accelerator programs: HAX (Shenzhen/San Francisco) for hardware, IndieBio (San Francisco) and RebelBio (Cork/London) for life sciences, Chinaccelerator (Shanghai) and MOX (Taipei) for cross-border internet, and FOOD-X (NYC) for the business of food. SOSV invests in over 150 companies per year and over its two-decade history has a net IRR of over 30%, putting it in the top 10% of VC funds in the world
MOX — the Mobile Only Accelerator — helps the best mobile startups from around the world acquire millions of users in Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe and South America. MOX brings free user acquisition to the 167 million users on its smartphone platform and investment in return for revenue share and equity. The strategic partnership kicks off with a one-month accelerator program where MOX provides 50-150k users to localize the app and optimize retention and monetization market by market. The first global accelerator in Taiwan, MOX is operated by SOSV - the Accelerator VC which is investing through seven accelerators in startups from around the world by industry vertical in Internet, Hardware, Biotech and Food.
ClearDekho’s focus revolves around transforming highly unorganized optical retail industry and open ClearDekho branded franchise retail stores offering budget eyewear solution. The company claims to have a robust asset light Franchise Owned Company Operated (FOCO) business model which acts as a catalyst to build scalable & sustainable long term business. It has opened 30 retail stores in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in the past 8 months and plans to expand to 100 stores by the end of this year.
In June 2018, the startup had received Rs 2 crore (about $300,000) in a pre-Series A investment round from funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts.
Earlier last month, Ratan Tata-backed eyewear startup Lenskart reached a valuation of $495.5M (Rs 3,400 Cr) in the latest secondary deal led by TR Capital and Hong Kong-based hedge fund Steadview Capital.
