Urban Tailor raises funds from Unitus Seed Fund and retail industry veteran

Urban Tailor, a Bengaluru-based venture that stitches customised women’s everyday wear, has raised an undisclosed amount from Unitus Seed Fund and BS Nagesh, a retail industry veteran.

The start-up will use the money to expand its services in Bengaluru and grow to other metros. The expansion details will be worked out, according to Vasudevan T, co-founder and CEO, Urban Tailor.

According to a press release from Unitus Seed Fund, Urban Tailor follows a three-step ordering process. Once a customer chooses the style and pattern for a salwar/kameez, kurta or blouse and places an order online, the pick-up service will collect the fabric and measurement for the garment from the customer’s premises. After confirming the measurements and the customisation requirements, the fabric is sent for stitching and the stitched product is delivered within 10 days. The cost for this starts at Rs 400.

Urban Tailor started operations in March 2015 and has so far serviced over 20,000 customers recording a 40 per cent month-on-month growth and 52 per cent repeat customers, according to the release. The venture selects tailors and small tailoring units to be on its platform after testing them and carrying out quality checks.

Vasudevan told BusinessLine that the venture could do over 500 orders a day, but he would not disclose how many orders it fulfilled daily. The venture decided to focus on women’s everyday wear as this was the segment that had the most demand and also because women found it difficult to get customised clothes. The money that Urban Tailor has raised would help it enter other markets, he said.

The release quoted Dave Richards, co-founder and Managing Partner, Unitus Seed Fund, as saying that Urban Tailor’s scalable platform where quality was ensured would pave the way for e-tailoring to become more popular. Nagesh, former Managing Director, Shoppers Stop and founder, TRRAIN (Trust for Retailers and Retail Associates of India), believed that there was a huge opportunity for Urban Tailor to become a branded, nation-wide, on-demand service for tailoring and alterations.

Urban Tailor’s founding team includes Ashish Singhal, a computer science graduate who was a core member of Amazon India’s technology team for four years; Lavanya Venkatraman, a fashion graduate from London College of Fashion and National Institute of Fashion Technology, who worked with Mytra for four years; and Vasudevan, who has wide experience in marketing and who headed the marketing and product division of Simplilearn, an online training company.

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