About Purplle:
Purplle is India’s online cosmetics and beauty product company based in based in Mumbai. Purplle was founded by Manish Taneja and Rahul Dash in 2011. Pruplle has made its name in cosmetics and beauty products vertical by providing consumers with a personalized shopping experience that takes skin and hair type into account. Going further we will talk about the Purplle Funding and some more insight about the business model and revenue model of Purplle.
Purplle Founders:
Purplle was founded by Manish Taneja and Rahul Dash in the year of 2011. Manish is an IIT Delhi alumni started up Purplle with Rahul Dash who went to IIT Kharagpur for his Bachelor’s degree and then went to IIM Ahmedabad for his business studies. Rahul worked in Tata groups before starting Purplle.
Both Manish Taneja and Rahul Dash along debated between furniture and fashion, before settling on beauty products. Because Cosmetic has the highest repeat category, thanks to women with increasing disposable income and exposure to trends. They started Purplle with the saving of 40 lakhs later invited investors for PurplleFunding.Let us talk about how Purplle raises its funding.
Purplle Funding:
In May 2014 Purplle raised the sum of 5 million in angel funding from Artha India Ventures. In the series A round of funding, Purplle raised 9 million dollars from Brand Capital, Ivycap Venture, and Blume Ventures.
In July 2016 the company raised another 6 million dollars from JSW ventures, Chennai Angels and existing investors like Brand Capital, Ivycap Venture, and Blume Ventures.
Purplle Business Model:
Purplle like other e-commerce providers like Nykaa and UrbanLadder also forayed into the private label space by subsuming in-house brand StayQuirky. Along with other 650 brands in different categories displayed on the platform.
Purplle has an engine that includes providing a seamless customer experience online by focusing on unit economics and not carrying too much inventory.
Marketing and Branding:
While Purplle competitor like Nykaa served up category-wise recommendations, Purplle has relied purely on tech and content to come to their rescue. The Q&A platform and user community created in 2013, helped inform the recommendation platform and Chatbot assistant. The data generated from the user community helped them to build buckets of consumers and refine their target audience more accurately.
The journey so far:
Started with the dreams of three highly motivated budding entrepreneurs, Purplle now has an over 17000 sq.ft. warehouse space. Purplle has become a employer of more than 120 employees, 50 of which manage the warehouse and logistics side of the business. As claimed by the founders, in the last six months, the startup raked in monthly revenues with hundred percent growth. The company has also declared 46 million dollars in gross merchandising volume sales, with an average ticket size of 1500 Rupees.
