venture capital<\/a> activity in the segment has picked up.<\/p>\nAccording to a report by Redseer, India\u2019s apparel market stood at roughly $70 billion in 2024 and is expected to reach $130-150 billion by 2030, expanding at a 10-12% compound annual growth rate.<\/p>\n
Niche categories like men\u2019s fashion, women\u2019s shapewear, Gen Z clothing and kids fashion are some gaps in the segment that will push more brands to enter the market in the upcoming fiscal year. This, in turn, will serve as an attractive investment opportunity, according to industry watchers.<\/p>\n
The companies and investors named above did not respond to ET\u2019s queries.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s changing
One of the key reasons that put investors away from fashion investment was complexities with inventory. Managing inventory at scale is often challenging, especially in fast fashion, since trends change rapidly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are always questions around inventory and the fact that there haven’t been many big successful outcomes in fashion, but that is certainly changing,\u201d said Dipanjan Basu, partner at Fireside Ventures.<\/p>\n
The segment is regaining investor confidence, thanks to more success stories like the initial public offering of Vedant Fashions which owns ethnic brand Manyavar, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe (investor) scepticism was valid mainly due to the nature of changing fashion that leads to high SKU (stock-keeping unit) complexity,\u201d said Dhruv Toshniwal, founder and chief executive at The Pant Project. New-age brands are getting better at being responsive to trends and keeping the demand-supply engine tightly integrated, he said.<\/p>\n
On the current fundraising activity, he said: \u201cA retail business requires capital to scale. In due course, at the right moment, when we find the right partner, we will pick up capital to continue our store and digital expansion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another key development in the segment is the entry of artificial intelligence. \u201cConsumer experience is getting revamped, because there is a lot more use of LLMs and AI which is helping in hyper personalisation of the platforms,\u201d said Anant Vidur Puri, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.<\/p>\n
Fashion and accessories have found a breath of fresh air in the quick commerce wave. Several startups like Knot, Slikk and Zilo have come up in the past year which are delivering within 30-90 minutes in cities like Mumbai, Gurugram and Bengaluru.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuick commerce allows fashion brands to have another big channel,\u201d said Rahul Chowdhri, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners. \u201cIndia doesn\u2019t have too many multi-brand fashion outlets. If digital brands have to go offline, they have to build their own store, which is a capex-intensive business.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quick commerce gives fashion brands a new channel since it provides the same convenience of offline and variety of online, he said. \u201cIt also solves the return problem because it\u2019s a last-minute event-led purchase; the chances of returning are lower.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The new fiscal year is likely to see a pickup in deal activity across the fashion and lifestyle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[174778,174779,114,125495,293,174773,174776,85,174774,174780,174777,46,174775,997],"class_list":{"0":"post-361627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-apparel-market-growth","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence-in-fashion","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-d2c-brands","12":"tag-entrepreneurship","13":"tag-fashion-investments","14":"tag-fashion-startup-funding","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-indian-fashion-brands","17":"tag-inventory-management-in-retail","18":"tag-investment-opportunities-in-fashion","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-quick-commerce-fashion","21":"tag-venture-capital"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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