Fashion marketplace CoutLoot to raise $25 mn in Series A funding

Mumbai-based online fashion marketplace CoutLoot will raise $25 million (about Rs 185 crore) in a Series A funding round from existing investors 9Unicorns, SOSV, Venture Catalysts and Astarc Ventures, as well as new investors.  

The fresh funds will be used for growth plans, CoutLoot co-founder Jasmeet Thind said. 

Founded by Thind and Mahima Kaul in 2016, CoutLoot started as a fashion resale platform, pivoted from offline to online social commerce platform in 2019.  

Coutloot’s business shares similarities with China’s Taobao and it competes directly with the Facebook marketplace and Instagram business pages. the company said in a statement to VCCircle.     

The company said it has over 120,000 active stores with over 15 million listings, with top sellers coming from smaller Indian towns like Nagaon in Assam, Basai near Gurugram, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Surat in Gujarat, and Ludhiana in Punjab.  

“India's non-MRP market is humongous and was hardly sold online, until now. We've not tried to reinvent the wheel but have brought local sellers from main markets of small cities and got them to sell to customers the same way they do it offline,” Thind said in a statement.      

Thind added, “Coutloot's business model attempts to fix the broken sales and supply chain in unbranded retail and sales in loose groceries”. 

The firm says the active sellers on average make up to Rs 8 Lakh a month, with average profits growing from Rs 3,000 in January 2020 to Rs 14,000 a month in July 2021.    

Coutloot offers features like bargaining, which is an integral part of hyperlocal shopping in India. The firm said buyers have received up to discounts as high as 43% by its sellers.     

The company provides its sellers with supply-chain support, payment support, and cataloging based on AI.    

In 2016, the company had received seed funding from Venture Catalysts.