Voonik, India’s largest fashion marketplace, forays into the premium eCommerce segment with the launch of Vilara.com. It acqui-hired Zohraa a market place for designers and boutiques to create Vilara. Further acqui-hired Styl and Picksilk to strengthen its core offerings in technology and product.
Voonik’s core app is focused on everyday women with 8 million app downloads, 10 million registered users and highest engagement among shopping apps. In contrast, Vilara will be a one-stop place to shop from thousands of premium boutiques and independent designers.
Sujayath Ali, CEO Voonik says “We are very excited about Vilara and the idea of bringing over 1000 boutiques in one place. We have been able to acqui-hire a talented bunch of entrepreneurs, with the right expertise to help us strengthen the Vilara offering.
By acqui-hiring Zohraa, we got access to a premium supplier network and a passionate team.
The founders Sanjeev Jain, Pramod Rathi, Vibhor Tikiya and Darshit Hirani have a rich experience of creating a premium marketplace.
With Picksilk on board, we now have access to a highly coveted silk weaver community.
Styl is a technologically advanced salon and spa booking App. Styl team gave the immediate impetus to the Vilara App development. We got to market with both web and app within a record time”.
With these acquisitions, the company has got a significant advantage in penetrating the segment of premium consumers who are willing to pay for high quality, unique lifestyle products. Vilara will cater to both fashion as well as home categories.
Vibhor Tikiya, CXO, Zohraa says- “We are passionate about the premium ecommerce segment. With the scale up experience of Voonik, Vilara is all set to become the shopping destination for premium products within a short time”. “We wanted to build a premium marketplace with Zohraa at scale, Vilara is the perfect platform to do so” says Sanjeev Jain, CEO, Zohraa.
Shiv Kancharla, CEO Picksilk says – “We built a company to connect under represented and technologically backward, handloom sector to a huge base of women who love silk sarees. Joining Vilara will help us in fulfilling our dream of bringing joy to every woman through a pure silk saree”.
Anup Mohan CEO, Styl says –“We are inspired by Sujayath’s vision to use technology to build the largest fashion marketplace. Vilara, is the perfect blend of technology and curated fashion”.
Voonik has been the fastest growing eCommerce company in India and has brought newer businesses into its fold with a singular vision of becoming the largest fashion company in the world. Besides these three acquisitions, Voonik also recently acqui-hired TrialKart, Getsy and a team from Klozee.
About Zohraa: Zohraa.com was founded in June, 2012 by IIM-Ahmedabad, Washington University and New York University graduates Sanjeev Jain (CEO), Pramod Rathi (COO), Vibhor Tikiya (CXO) and Darshit Hirani (CTO) respectively. The site, positioned as an online occasion-wear brand with a high emphasis on curation, sells ethnic wear and designer wear products. Zohraa has a team of 12 members.
About Styl: Styl was founded as a platform to connect salons & stylists and consumers, through an app. Both the founder Anup Mohan and Srikant Ch were part of founding team of Lookup earlier. Styl has a team of 9 members.
Picksilk.com: Picksilk.com, Indian online silk store with 10,000+ handloom saree collection, was founded by two engineering college friends Shivakumar Kancharla and Hareesh Vemala The company’s mission is to empower weavers through technology and transform the industry by making it more demand oriented by mapping manufacturing to the actual customers’ choices rather than to the weavers’ convenience and resources. Picksilk has a team of 8 members.
About Voonik: Voonik is India’s growing fashion marketplace. Voonik is the leader in the unbranded fashion category with an annual GMV rate of over $80 million. It has over 10 million registered users, with 8 million app downloads. Voonik has built best-in-class personalization technology that made it the most engaging ecommerce app in India. On the supply side, it has over 15 Lakh products from more than 10,000 sellers. Voonik has a highly scalable ‘lean’ marketplace business model where it operates without inventory and fulfilment centres.