Women wellness direct-to-consumer brand BlissClub has raised $15 million in its Series A round led by Eight Roads Ventures and existing investor Elevation Capital, the Bengaluru-based startup said on May 18.
The funding comes at a time when several D2C brands are seeing growth flatten as demand falls.
The round also saw participation from angel investors including Swiggy CEO Sriharsha Majety, co-Mamaearth co-founder Ghazal Alagh, Licious co-founders Vivek Gupta and Abhay Hanjura, former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram, SoftBank executives Sumer Juneja and Munish Varma, Shopify executive Brennan Loh and global fashion influencer Masoom Minawala.
The startup creates fitness and wellness apparel for women and will use the funds to build its app, research and development, marketing and brand building and expand its team, which has 70 members.
“We have built the brand very differently from others. We prioritise function over design. We focused on just 10 types of designs so far. We will be looking at how to go wide in categories and lower the pricing,” founder Minu Margeret told Moneycontrol.
BlissClub clocked 25X growth in just 10 months and aims to clock an annual recurring revenue of Rs 100 crore over the next six months, the company said.
Margeret, an ISB alumna and a national-level frisbee player, founded BlissClub as a community-first brand.
“Right now, the price range of our product would be around Rs 2,000 which we plan to bring down to Rs 1,500,” said Margeret, who worked with PhonePe, ABInBev and HUL before founding BlissClub, said.
The brand would focus on the fitness and wellness of women and would build products around it, she said. The brand has a stronger metro presence and 90 percent of its sales are through its website.
“Women’s fitness has been complete white space in India, we have just not had anyone build for us. The limited definition of fitness for women has been restricted to weight-loss journeys. We at BlissClub believe in celebrating the journey of movement,” she said.
BlissClub grew 45 percent MoM with only 10 products, supported by a growing customer base, she said.
“This reflects in our NPS of 75, extremely low product return rates of 3 percent compared to the industry average of 35 percent and best-in-class retention rates,” she said.
More than half of the team—55 percent—were women and over 60 percent of leadership roles were also held by them, she said.
Moneycontrol earlier reported that the overall funding in the D2C space has increased to $153.4 million this March quarter from $105 million a year ago. While the number of deals remains flat, the ticket size has increased.
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