Bengaluru based online lingerie brand Buttercups Intimates Pvt. Ltd informed that it has raised a pre-series A funding from online marketplace Snapdeal’s former chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran, and its existing angel investors Kanwaljit Singh and Manoj Varghese. But strangely enough, the brand wanted to keep it under wraps when it came to announcing the amount they got in funding.
Buttercups plans to utilize the funds for expanding its product range. Pre-series A funds help start-ups survive for a brief length of time until they can arrange a larger round of financing at preferred terms.
looking through the history of funding for Buttercups, it shows that founded in 2013 by Arpita Ganesh, initially the company crowd sourced Rs.4 lakh from 200 women in 2014, and further raised US $1 million angel investment from Kanwaljit Singh, Angie Mahtaney, Sridhar Viswanathan and Manoj Varghese in the same year.
Apart from its online presence, Buttercups also has two physical stores, which are actually 300-400 sq. ft sized fitting rooms. The founder mentioned that the fitting rooms receive 15-20 women on an average per day, 90% of which remarkably converts into sales.
Buttercups receives an average of 500 orders per month of which 60% come from fitting rooms. A typical fitting room order is for Rs.3,500 against Rs.2,000 for a purely online order. Half of all its orders come from Bengaluru, while Delhi and Mumbai together account for another 30%.
By 2016 end, the company wants to open two 15 more fitting rooms across 10 cities in India, including Bombay. The firm plans to close a series A round of funding within the next four months too.
