How is Fashion E-Commerce Startup Madbow Ventures Planning to Enter Offline Retail Market

Despite the impact of the pandemic, the online fashion segment in India has seen an upward trend. According to Unicommerce, the online fashion industry continues to grow upwards with order volume growth of 51 percent and GMV (Gross Merchant Value) growth of 45 percent in FY21, compared to the previous financial year. The overall market value of textile and apparel across India in the financial year 2021 was $80 billion and this value is estimated to reach $190 billion by 2026, as per Statista.

One of the leading names in the fashion industry is Madbow Ventures Ltd, which was founded by Naveen Mahlawat in August 2016. Currently, the company has a few in-house brands catering to lifestyle and fashion like stalkbae.com, streetstylestalk.com, slaydeal.com, lovedamoda, and SlayXO.com. Besides, it is also a platform that helps other acquired D2C brands and moves them to scale at a fast pace with the help of technology, marketing, and operations to make a successful business.

What’s on Offer?

With the five existing labels, the company caters to western wear, footwear, and lingerie segments with more than 1,500 SKUs across the categories. The company has a base of around over 12,00,000 satisfied customers in a market of more than 25K serviceable pin codes throughout India. Last year, MadBow got an export license and started catering to international borders like Europe and Africa.

“We are planning to launch fashion brands/ labels into kids, ethnic, high fashion, cosmetics and general merchandising as well as bringing all the fashion and lifestyle requirements under one roof,” Naveen Mahlawat, Founder, MD, and CEO, MadBow Ventures Ltd said.

The brand’s target market is the lifestyle segment catering to all the casual/ semi-casual, footwear, and lingerie. “Females are our target audience who want to look good with high-end clothing and footwear available at reasonable rates,” he added.

Technology is the Core of Business

Madbow Ventures calls itself a new-age retail-tech firm.

“Technology is our core strength, and since the inception, we have matched all dots of e-retail through our technology stack which helped us to scale our business on a year-on-year basis. We have automated most of the departments through technology and built this solution with our own in-house team. All the reports, workflows, and processes are very tightly coupled with the help of technology,” Mahlawat stated.

Building D2C Brands

The concept of acquiring fast-growing digital-first brands and scaling their products is gaining momentum in India. In the past year, several start-ups have spawned in India to replicate and scale brands by providing technology, mentorship, and capital support. Over the years, Madbow Ventures has got hands-on experience to scale D2C brands from scratch and boost its sales to the next level.

Recently, the company raised $2 million in pre-series A funding. With this, Madbow plans to develop or maybe acquire a majority stake in 10-15 mid-size brands during the next 12-18 months which will boost its growth. “We are aiming to develop a chain of brands that will cater across the spectrum and would like to be known for Madbow - building next-generation D2C brands,” Mahlawat asserted.

Future Plans

MadBow Ventures is targeting to achieve a revenue of Rs 100-120 crore in the next 18-24 months. “We are closing the FY 21-22 with GMV of Rs 35 crore and the majority of the revenue came from our own websites,” Mahlawat noted.

The company also has plans to enter into the offline market and is looking to diversify itself into omnichannel brands. Keeping this in mind, it has already initiated with MBOs (Multi Brand Outlets) and done some strategic tie-ups with retail chains. MadBow is also planning to launch its own EBOs (Exclusive Brand Outlets). It is eyeing 100+ MBO stores and 10 EBOs by the end of 2022. 

“With an impressive response for start-ups like us, we are now focusing to diversify our sales channels to the marketplace, B2B, offline stores, etc. We recently did a strategic tie-up with leading marketplace players like Myntra, AJIO, Amazon Fashion, etc., and provided curated designs after discussing with their fashion teams. All these initiatives will help us achieve our revenue target in the coming fiscal years,” he added.

MadBow is further expecting to float IPO in the next 24-36 months.