Mumbai-based beauty and wellness services marketplace, BigStylist.com, has recently raised $1 Million in pre-Series A round of funding from Info Edge.
Founded by IIT Kharagpur graduates, Richa Singh, Chinmaya Sharma and Anurag Srivastava, the marketplace enables customers to place orders and get access to experienced stylists and beauticians.
“Initially, we push the utilitarian services to our customers as it is easier to initiate a trial there. Once the customer has experienced us for the basic services, we find it easier to upgrade them to value-added services as well as convert them towards repeat customers,” informed Sharma.
While, Singh added, “Just beauty and wellness service is a $5 billion industry in India, growing at 20 per cent year-on-year. Because of the traditional model that requires physical presence; single brands have not been able to scale very fast. A technology platform like ours has more efficient cost-structure and is better positioned to grow rapidly.”
The currently team strength comprises of 25 people and has about 200 beauticians in its network.
Significantly, the wellness services marketplace has made adequate headlines in the recent past with Gomalon acquired Bookmyspa for Rs12 Crore, and in the month of August this year, Bengaluru-based Vyomo had raised $2 million in Pre-series A round from Rocket Internet. Likewise, The Home Salon on-demand beauty and wellness service provider had raised a seed investment from VentureNursery’s members during the same month.
This significant shift in preferences of investors towards wellness start-ups, specially service providers or aggregator model has opened door for much potent area of investment.
