Melorra is all about diminishing the wardrobe mismatch the modern Indian woman is facing. Founder of Melorra, Saroja Yeramilli tells us that the fine jewellery startup is up to date with technology and fashion trends. It’s also one of the rare instances where idea to seed funding happened in 3-4 months.
About Melorra
Melorra is a fashion fine jewellery brand based out of Bangalore launched in January 2016. “We are not a jewellery market place, our designs are own and launched under the brand of Melorra. I would say it is the first jewellery company to bring together fashion, jewellery and technology”, says Saroja. The jewellery is produced using 3D printing while the app was designed by Hrush Bhatt (Co-founder Cleartrip) and the style feed (a magazine with a buy button) was shot by India’s leading photographers.
The jewellery line wants to be keep up with the current fashion trends and not be reflective of traditional styles of days gone by. “We have our own designers working out of design studios in Bangalore and UK, where we send them not to temples and traditional buildings for inspiration but to the Fashion Weeks at Paris and Milan.” It reminds one of Zara, the affordable yet sophisticated modern apparel brand.
The wardrobe mismatch
Melorra’s founder Saroja saw this big mismatch between the urban Indian woman’s clothing and her jewellery. While her wardrobe is overwhelmingly (around 80%) western, her jewellery is locker bound due to the heavy designs. These limitations have led to a generation of under-jeweled women. That along with her time heading design and marketing at Tanishq inspired her to found Melorra to gap the bridge.
The really promising start
The jewellery is kept affordably priced between 3,000 and 100,000 rupees. The average price point is between 18,000 and 20,000 rupees. Even at that price you would think there aren’t too many returning customers. “Even I thought that at the beginning. I was thinking the same customer might buy every year or so, but in the few months we have been active the returning customer percentages is in double digits.”
There aren’t too many female CEOs heading jewellery companies even though the target market is overwhelmingly female. When asked whether she had it tough starting out as an entrepreneur and as a woman, she says, “As a novice entrepreneur I experienced the generic problems any first time founder would face but other than that things have been really great. I think it’s an advantage that I am a woman and wanted to start a fashion jewellery line - maybe the problems are yet to come”, she laughed.
From inception of idea to getting the seed funding from Lightbox Ventures it only took Melorra 3-4 months according to Saroja. “No, it wasn’t difficult convincing the investors.” In fact the startup received the highest maximum funding in a seed funding round of 5 million dollars. The average seed funding amount at the moment is about 1-2 crores (approximately 150,000 – 300,000 dollars).
“Ours is probably a very unusual story”. But it is also about investor confidence in the founder. Saroja has about 25 years of experience working with global brands like Titan, Marico and Dell. While at Titan she oversaw the sales and marketing operations and the design team for Tanishq at a time it wasn’t doing too well and managed to make a success out of it. “Also I have the connections needed to make a success of it whether it is manufacturers, suppliers and design talent.” It’s one of those rare times the founder has absolutely everything they need to make a hit of it.
“Melorra isn’t too discount-driven, we will also be looking to ship worldwide especially to Singapore, US and the Middle East very soon. We are in no hurry for more funding, but investors are quite bullish on us so I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
