Helion Ventures leads Series A round in fashion m-commerce start-up
Bangalore, February 18 2015: Wooplr, India’s first mobile fashion discovery and shopping platform, today announced their Series A funding round of US$ 5 million led by Helion Ventures.
The Wooplr app helps people decide what to buy and where to shop based on their interests, location and social circle. It gives the user a personalized feed of curated fashion products. Wooplr’s fast growing community of shoppers of which 80% are women, share fashion inspirations and the latest trends on the go.
The company was founded by Arjun Zacharia, Soumen Sarkar, Praveen Rajaretnam and Ankit Sabharwal and is based out of Bangalore.
The funds will primarily be used to hire top talent, expand the team and grow the Wooplr community as a whole. This infusion of funds will see Mr. Rahul Chandra, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Helion Ventures join Wooplr’s Board of Directors. The Series A financing builds on an exceptional year for Wooplr which saw a rapidly growing roster of clients and market momentum in the fast burgeoning area of m-commerce.
“Wooplr’s offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing demand for solutions in m-commerce that brings together both, online and offline retailers on a common platform,” said Mr. Rahul Chandra, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Helion Ventures. “We believe the market will continue to see a shift towards m-commerce. Wooplr is a powerful solution for the industry and we are excited to collaborate with and support them as they work to build a great company in an exciting category” he added.
Commenting on the funding, Mr. Arjun Zacharia, CEO said, “Wooplr has just scratched the surface of the potential that m-commerce has to offer in India to both consumers and merchants. The financial support and domain expertise of Helion Ventures and our angel investors will help us execute our vision even more rapidly and with focus.”
The company previously raised $225,000 from a group of angel investors including Rahul Khanna, Sunil Kalra, Vivek Pandit and Jaspreet Bindra.
The Wooplr mobile app was released in December, 2013 and is currently available for Android, iOS and the mobile web.
About Helion Ventures
Helion is a multi-stage, technology focused venture fund with over $600 million under management. Helion invests in technology and technology-powered businesses such as eCommerce, online services, mobility, enterprise software and outsourcing. Founded in 2006, Helion has over fifty portfolio companies and has backed companies like MakeMyTrip, RedBus, TaxiForSure, YepMe, Ezetap and others. Helion has its offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon (NCR) and Silicon Valley.
About Wooplr
Wooplr is a fashion and lifestyle shopping app.
Wooplr’s mission is to connect people with stores based on interests, location and social circles. We want to bring back the joy and social nature of shopping. The aim is to help people make decisions related to shopping a lot easier on their phones; wherever they are, whenever they want.
Wooplr was co-founded by four Ex-McAfee (now Intel) employees with diverse backgrounds in 2013. We have a growing 20-member team based out of Bangalore. The Mobile Platform presents a huge opportunity for Wooplr. It helps us unify online and local commerce into a single point engagement for the users.