Fashalot went live in April 2015 as a product discovery mobile platform in Delhi and shortly added Bangalore and NCR cities. The new avatar of Fashalot was launched in January 2016. It is formed by three Co-founders Amit Koshal, Amit Sharma and Rishi Batra, who together bring over 40 years of collective industry experience in mobile, digital, tech, retail and investments.
Team BWDisrupt Interacts With Rishi Batra, COO & CFO, Fashalot and Spoke To HimAbout Fashalot The startup adds a digital user interface that sits on top of physical shopping world and help both retailers and shoppers to seamlessly connect over the most preferred mode in India - Mobile. With Fashalot app, Shoppers discover latest on-going in-store offers, stores nearby, latest trends and still maintain the charm of physical shopping – touch, feel & family outing. Retailers on the other end use Fashalot as a marketing platform and attract new and repeat foot traffic to their brick & mortar stores, which help them increase their sales. It also reverses the tide – In the erstwhile structure it has always been brand communicating with the customers, Fashalot lets users communicate with the brands when they want to shop, which makes it most contextual for both shoppers and retailers.
GenesisFashalot earlier started as a product discovery platform that allowed users to search fashion products nearby and also provided exclusive discounts. That idea came from our daily lives on how most of the time we are constantly struggling when we think of shopping offline – product availability, offers at stores etc and clearly saw the need for structuring this large unstructured market with technology as an enabler. However, within 5 months of business we generated a lot of user and retailer data on their behaviour and preferences. We realized that more than product availability, user were searching and visiting stores due to store level offers, exclusive offers and cash back. We then launched the new avatar of Fashalot on January 2016 with focusing on Store discovery, brand visibility, offer discovery and launched F-Cash, Fashalot cash-back that a shopper can use at our premier stores or use it for Lifestyle purchase like – recharge, movie vouchers, restaurant, grocery buying etc.
Unique Key Points (1) We are an O2O (Online to Offline) extension for brick and mortar fashion stores. We are capitalizing on the real need of brick and mortar stores is to attract more and more focused foot falls for increased sales in their stores compared to selling on-line or delivering their products to shoppers home. In our case people are already used to shopping at brick & mortar stores however had got lured with heavy discounting online. To counter that, and re-gain the need of offline shopping for fashion, Fashalot is providing hoppers rich information, F-cash (cashbacks) and multiple other reasons to go offline shopping. We were very selective in choosing the category of Fashion and Lifestyle considering its one industry that requires high touch and feel, has high ARPU, margins and is an engaging category for brick and mortar, unlike standard products such as mobile, electronics, books that do well on e-commerce.
(2) Secondly, there are many O2O companies that are mushrooming and are trying to solve the problem in a different way; however being the first mover, with ultra strong retailer tie-ups and deep understanding of the shopper we are way ahead of the curve.
Funding RaisedThe Pre-Series A round led by YourNest and Rajul Garg has given us amazing mentors, great push and confidence. We are investing this capital in product, acquiring top talent and opening new markets. In the near future you will see Fashalot leading the creation of new ecosystem for both Shoppers and Brands with real time offers, proximity based technology and innovative marketing features for brand and retailers. In the next 6 months, we will reach to 10x levels from current levels fostering 2 lakh+ store walk-ins at partner stores that too with positive unit economics and a strong business.
Monetization ModelFashalot has varied revenue models that brand is comfortable with. Currently we have mix of pay-outs based on walk-ins to store, revenue share, subscription and advertising. We believe that Store walk-ins and transactions are the most scalable one and contribute to nearly 90% of our partnerships.
Challenges FacedStartups and challenges go hand in hand. We benefited as all the Co-founders knew each other from past and had very contextual and distinct skill sets. Amit Sharma is a tech leader, Amit Koshal has great experience in mobile / B2C ventures, and Rishi brought finance & retail knowledge. First and foremost, the challenge most startup face in the initial days was finding the right team – we make sure that employees that we hire are of top class quality and share the company vision. All the Co-founders personally met them and aligned them to the vision and it turned to be the biggest strength when we were pivoting. Changing the product was another big challenge – as Co-founders it is hard to believe that the product that you built is not getting user adoption, but we failed fast and learnt faster. We had to restart from the scratch and it turned out to be the model having very high adoption and strong customer engagement.
Traction Details & Future PlansThe startup has over 2,200 stores signed up in Delhi/NCR and Bangalore, and works with leading national and international brands. On the shopper side, we have 65,000+ shoppers that generates 15,000+ walk-ins every month in our partner stores. We are investing heavily on the product, tech and marketing. In next 6 months you shall see a lot of new additions on the app and we should be providing 2 lakh+ walk-ins every month.
Market Size & OpportunityFashion and Lifestyle collectively is $100 billion industry in India. Further, 99% of retail market is offline and only 1% is online, making it a huge play for O2O businesses like Fashalot. The smartphone penetration especially in metros have changed the landscape in O2O companies favour – Research suggest that 86% of consumer start their journey in one channel and end up in a different one and to add to that 55% are inclined to purchase in-store when offers are made available on mobile. Both the market and medium support for a big play.
