Mumbai-based MTC Ecom Pvt Ltd, owner of online lingerie firm PrettySecrets.com, is all set to close a Series B funding of about ₹90-100 crore next month.

The company had raised Series A of ₹12 crore from Rehan Yar Khan’s Orios Venture Partners along with Indian Angel Network (IAN) and early-stage investor India Quotient.

When contacted, Karan Behal, founder of PrettySecrets.com, refused to provide any details on the fundraising. However, he said the company plans to raise funds to build a strong supply chain, launch mobile application, introduce new categories, strengthen its product line and enter the international market.

“We have recently tied up with Souk.com in the UAE and will be targeting Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the next four months. In next six months, we are looking at entering seven more countries in Middle East and few countries in South East Asia,” said Behal, who started PrettySecrets as an online brand in 2012. He also aims to grow the company’s sales by 15-20 times by this year-end.

PrettySecrets started out as a women's sleepwear brand nine years ago with an offline presence in major departmental stores such as Shoppers Stop and Pantaloon. However, Behal, whose family business was into manufacturing and export of ladies nightwear, sensed the humungous opportunity in the e-commerce segment, completely shifted his focus to selling only online. Earlier, PrettySecrets used sell its products on its own platform but soon faced heavy competition from bigger online marketplaces such as Amazon, Myntra, Snapdeal and Zivame.

Since last one year, it has started selling on 12 other e-commerce platforms, including Bengaluru-based lingerie marketplace Zivame, and enjoys 15 per cent market share in the online lingerie market. Comparing itself with home-grown offline brand Lovable, Behal said that PrettySecrets has over 1,100 different kind of products whereas Lovable does only 150.

“We have witnessed a strong growth since we went online. We have grown almost 20 times in 2 years. We are now working towards growing the lingerie category alone. For, this we have partnered with all major online players and lobbying with them on how to increase sales of this particular category by helping them with sizing related issues, mapping the sub-categories, data on consumer demands among several other things,” Behal added.

Even as the online market is evolving, lingerie as a category has caught the attention of both shoppers and investors. While women consumers, even from smaller towns, find it convenient to shop online without getting embarrassed, investors find the category attractive because it is highly unorganised and thus under-explored. Besides, it is niche and a high margin business.

Zivame.com, which claims to be India’s largest online retailer of lingerie, is also in the market for more funds to expand its customer base both in India and overseas. According to Richa Kar, founder-CEO of Zivame.com, the company gets 1,200 orders every day.

According to industry estimates, online lingerie sites are growing by almost 300 per cent year-on-year. Other vertical players in this category are ShopImagine, Oyegirl, Cilory and HerStyle.

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