High Street Essentials (HSE) has raised Rs 20.75 crore in its pre-Series C round led by existing investors, SAIF Partners and India Quotient. Abhishek Dalmia and several other family offices also participated in the latest funding round. The pre-series C round involves a convertible note, which will be converted during the series C raise. A convertible note is a short-term debt that converts into equity, typically in a future financing round in a startup.
HSE is the parent company of women’s fashion brands FabAlley and Indya. Earlier this year, HSE raised Rs 8 crore in venture debt from Trifecta Capital. The firm has raised Rs 97 crore in equity funding and Rs 13 crore in venture debt since its inception.
“The new capital raised will be utilised for expanding the brands’ D2C (digital to consumer) footprint with new initiatives such as a subscription-based shopping experience, and catalogue curation with AI-based recommendations based on customers’ affinity and data mining,” said the statement released by the firm.
To combat the challenges created by the ongoing pandemic, HSE has ventured into production of new categories such as fashion masks, lounge wear and formal keyboard up dressing option. Its fashion line Indya has recorded massive online growth in last fiscal year in international markets and the company plans to upscale it by adding localized offers, currencies and payment methods.
HSE was founded by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik in 2012 and they have grown their retail presence in financial year 20 with 13 new Indya stores and 5 FabAlley stores. They have also expanded their presence to 400 shop-in-shops in the same year.
Poddar stated, “In the midst of this unprecedented global crisis, we are working hard to ensure that we leverage all our assets such as our nimble supply chain, data-led designing and sharp focus on customer experience so that HSE emerges as a leading fashion retail company in the industry.”