Sustainable footwear startup Neeman’s in talks to raise Rs 100-120 cr

“We are expecting five to six times growth in valuation in the latest round, backed by nearly 600 percent growth in revenues last fiscal at around Rs 50 crore,” Neeman’s co-founder and director Amar Preet Singh told Moneycontrol, adding that they expect to close the fresh fundraising round over the next few weeks. Representative image.

Sustainable footwear startup Neeman’s is in advanced talks with institutional investors and growth funds to raise around Rs 100-120 crore in a Series B funding round where existing angel and venture capital investors evinced interest to participate.

The Hyderabad-headquartered startup, which raised a couple of rounds of funding including an angel round of $1 million from Anicut Capital and Series A funding of $2.7 million from Sixth Sense Ventures, was valued at around Rs 100 crore in the last round.

“We are expecting five to six times growth in valuation in the latest round, backed by nearly 600 percent growth in revenues last fiscal at around Rs 50 crore,” Neeman’s co-founder and director Amar Preet Singh told Moneycontrol, adding that they expect to close the fresh fundraising round over the next few weeks.

Having introduced four sustainable footwear models produced from Marino wool, organic cotton, recycled PET bottles and recycled tyres, Neeman’s is now preparing to unveil three more eco-friendly footwear models made from tree wood, fruit pulp and bamboo over the next few months.

Neeman’s, which is currently drawing most of its revenues from online sales, both through its own website and from aggregators like Amazon, Flipkart and Myntra, has recently opened shop-in-shops at Lifestyle and Shopper’s Stop in Hyderabad. The startup is preparing to open 10-12 offline stores covering all metros over the next year or so.

“The funds to be raised through the latest round will be deployed towards R&D, marketing, expanding sustainable footwear product portfolio and to meet the working capital requirements,” said Singh.

Having shifted its assembling of footwear from China to India, Neeman’s is also evaluating options to set up an assembling facility in Telangana while responding to the invitation of the state government that offered land for the facility.

Singh said the footwear startup, which had teamed up with Google last year to offer co-branded shoes, is now in talks with a set of corporates and fashion brands to unveil co-branded footwear.