Beauty & wellness start-up Stylofie raises about Rs 1.65 cr from Hong Kong-based Swastika Co.

Gurgaon-based beauty and wellness marketplace Stylofie.com, which is operated by Soulmo Solutions Pvt Ltd, has raised about Rs 1.65 crore ($250,000) in seed funding from Hong Kong-based Swastika Company Ltd.

As suggested a press statement released by the company, the three months old start-up will use the funds to strengthen its technology infrastructure and expand its services to Delhi.

Founded by Prateek Agarwal, a chartered accountant, who has worked previously with Videocon, CSG, Bharti Airtel and Ranbaxy and was the board advisor on Telecom Oman along with Saurav Dey worked with Genpact, Accenture Technology Solutions and Ingersoll-Rand in the past, Stylofie was conceptualised by the duo on a midnight conversation sharing common pain for lack of spas around them.

“If you look closely at the beauty and wellness industry, you will realize that it is primarily offline with bundled deals getting peddled on online deal platforms. From a consumer perspective, think about long waiting times on weekend, lack of a standardized review/rating mechanism for discovery & non availability of rate cards online – all pain points which called out for a solution,” noted Dey.

With its website and mobile app, Stylofie provides a platform to consumers to discover and compare salons and spas, check reviews, and make bookings and payments.

The start-up claims to have about 100 premium salon/spa outlets listed on its platform.

“Stylofie has two things going for them – a great team of seasoned professionals at the helm and a monetization plan. They have started generating revenues from day one and have very healthy unit economics,” said Vaibhav Jain, Director at Swastika.

India’s beauty and wellness industry has seen a lot of investor action lately. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report estimates the sector to be worth Rs 1 lakh crore this year. Several online players that facilitate listings, discovery and booking of wellness services have raised external capital.