VioletStreet Raises INR 2 Crore Funding In Angel Round Led By Venkat Vallabhaneni & Abhibus CEO Sudhakar Reddy

Hyderabad based online fashion social network, VioletStreet.com has raised INR 2 Crore in an angel round led by Venkat Vallabhaneni with participation from Srinivasa Rao Paturi and Sudhakar Reddy. The company will utilize the funds to scale the technology, grow its team and increase its reach in the Indian market. Post funding, Venkat Vallabhaneni, Former Senior Vice President of Bank of America and serial entrepreneur, Sudhakar Reddy, Founder and CEO of Abhibus.com will join the board of the company.

Founded by Ankur Gupta and Nayan Kumar, VioletStreet is essentially a fashion community that integrates the excitement of offline shopping to the online world. VioletStreet users can discover fashion in a more exciting way by engaging with friends and an entire fashion community before buying. VioletStreet also allows its users to mix and match and create custom looks by putting together fashion products from various sites. More than 3000 looks are created by users on the site every month. The company had previously raised Rs. 10 Lakh in a TiE Smashup event held in May, 2014.

Lead investor, Venkat Vallabhaneni opined, "Fashion is a mode of self-expression and with everything moving online for Gen X, this is only a natural extension. We believe that fashion will be the key driver in the ecommerce growth story in India by 2015. We believe in the founders' ability to build a strong team and technology around their idea."

Ankur Gupta who after graduating in Computer Science Engineering from NIT, Allahabad in 2010, joined Microsoft R&D and worked for 3 years until he quit his job in 2013 to start a business. He is a 2013-14 fellow at SLP, Hyderabad.

Nayan Kumar is a 2013 graduate in Chemical Engineering and Economics from BITS-Pilani, Hyderabad, and he had founded a software services company before co-founding VioletStreet. He is a 2013-14 fellow at SLP, Hyderabad.

VioletStreet & Ziffy raises Rs.10 lakh each in TiE Smashup Event

A social fashion e-commerce portal VioletStreet and ride sharing app developer Zify raise Rs 10 lakh ($16,000) each in 'SmashUp' event in Hyderabad organised by TiE in association with NASSCOM 10,000 Startups

In the 'SmashUp' event nine startups were allowed to pitch their respective business models on stage with a chance of on-spot funding from eight investors participating in the event. In the end, two early stage companies, VioletStreet.com and Ziffy got on-spot funding and walk out with prize cheques.

These startups raised the funds as part of Nasscom's on-the-spot funding event for prototype stage companies in Hyderabad. Two on-the-spot funding events have been held in Bangalore and Mumbai so far.

VioletStreet.com is a fashion aggregator and social shopping portal where you get updates on the latest trends in Indian fashion from people around you. It is probably the first site in India to offer real-time shopping with friends.

Zify on other hand is India's on-demand ride sharing & flexible Car pooling community. The company is performing some pre-release checks on Ziffy app and it will soon be available on major App stores. As per company plans the first phase zify services would only be exclusive to the residents of Hyderabad.

Nasscom had commenced the 10,000 Start-ups programme with the support of Google, Microsoft, Kotak, Intel and Verisign. Selected Start-ups will get a Start-up Kit in program event i.e. a package worth $25,000 of value added services and credits from Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other companies.

Although if a startup have a working prototype usually these startups get funding anywhere from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore from leading angels however Violetsreet and Ziffy got only Rs.10 lakhs probably because they have wor-in-prototype and Ziffy is yet to be launched.