SeenIt is trying to change the way people shop for the things they love. Says co-founder Saksham Karwal: “You upload an image of something you love but don’t know where to buy and the community hunts it down for you.”
Fashion meets tech
Karwal has an interesting insight behind the genesis of this entrepreneurial journey. “My co-founder (Vedanta Kumar) and I were watching a James Bond movie when suddenly he asked me, “Hey, where can I get the sunglasses Daniel Craig is wearing?” I gave him the most obvious response anyone could—Google it!”
Kumar decided to search for them on Google. “Well, he got a million results in an instant but on opening each of those, he realised none of the search results actually led him to the product he wanted to buy,” says Karwal. “What a glorious waste of time!”
But that set them thinking. Searching for fashion and lifestyle products is a pain and no one seemed to have a solution, especially given that the online lifestyle market in India is expected to grow to $45 billion by 2020.
Making waves
SeenIt went online in November 2015 and growth has been phenomenal, stresses Karwal. “According to data monitored by SimilarWeb.com, from February to July 2016, we are the fastest growing fashion network in India. Apart from web, we are also present on the iOS App Store and the Play Store,” he says. “We have 3.5 lakh monthly visits with 1 million monthly page views. A metric that is very important to measure is our bounce rate and that is under 10%—indicating extremely high levels of engagement.”
The 50,000-member strong community of SeenIt includes stylists, bloggers, retailers, designers and brands looking to reach their target audience.
Money matters
SeenIt raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding last year from a group of angel investors that includes Vineet Singh (a Housing.com investor), Pradyumna Dalmia (founder of Calcutta Angels), Tanvi Rangwalla (head of CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad), and MD at Goldman Sachs. The fashion start-up is now looking to raise pre-series A funding of R5 crore.
“We have started generating revenue by helping brands reach out to their target audience, given the high spending power of our community—female millenials from the top ten cities. With the millions of data points for each user, we have the power to personalise the offering for them,” says Saksham. “We are working on a native ad platform—something that no one in India has attempted before.”
