Smytten, online platform for consumer product discovery and trials, on Tuesday announced that it has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Fireside Ventures.
The round saw participation from Sharrp Ventures (Mariwala family office), Survam Partners (Suman Kant Munjal family office), and Waao Partners (Pratul Shroff family office). Existing investor Roots Ventures also participated in the round.
The platform was founded by ex-Googler Swagat Sarangi, and ex-Unilever executive, Siddhartha Nangia in 2015 as a luxury product sampling service. However, the broken supply chain for the luxury brands in India has pushed the company to pivot to focus largely on direct-to-consumers (D2C) as well as premium brand sampling across fragrances, beauty, makeup, male grooming, food and beverages, baby and mother care along with health & wellness categories.
It targets consumers between 20 to 35 years who have disposable incomes and are willing to experiment with products they use.
Swagat Sarangi, founder, Smytten said that pre-purchase buying experience will be the biggest enabler and will fuel the burgeoning Indian D2C market, which is projected to touch $100 billion in next 4-5 years.
“We believe this sampling-led tried-and-tested method of customer engagement will change the way D2C brands and consumers interact, making it more immersive and experience-based. We are deploying this funding to build future capabilities for the D2C ecosystem,” he noted.
A significant amount of funding will go into technology development, which will help D2C brands with rich consumer data for new product development, acquiring customers, consumer marketing and achieving scale.
“We will also invest in developing infrastructure to ensure next day product delivery which enhances consumer experience. We will also be dabbling in online to offline touchpoints such as experience kiosks/zones at airports/malls,” Sarangi added.
Currently, Smytten claims to have more than five million users who can try products from over 700 brands at a minimal or no cost before they decide to buy. These brands include both D2C players such as Mamaearth, Plum, mCaffeine as well as premium brands such as Kama Ayurveda.
Kannan Sitaram, venture partner, Fireside Ventures, and new board member, Smytten said that with D2C becoming mainstream, brand marketers need fresh, sharper solutions that can help in creating the right brand experience for consumers who are on the lookout for superior quality products.
“We believe the development of an enabling ecosystem presents a great investable opportunity and will be a big game-changer for the consumer brand revolution that’s shaping up in India. We are excited to partner with Swagat and Siddhartha as they create data-driven experiential solutions for brands to engage with the right users, based on accurate behavioural targeting which helps reduce their customer acquisition cost (CAC) and engagement cost,” he added.
In 2019, Smytten raised an investment of $1.5 million in its pre-series A from Roots Ventures that also participated in the current funding round.
Japan Vyas, managing partner, Roots Ventures said “Smytten’s revenue has grown 8X since the time we invested. We strongly believe that the integrated approach taken by Smytten to solve the pre-purchase conundrum for consumers in the D2C space will see them lead a potentially $10 billion sampling and advertising market in the projected $100 billion D2C brand market by 2025.”
Smytten also has marquee angel investors such as Rajan Anandan, ex-MD of Google India and South East Asia.
This article was first published on livemint.com