Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

ThePrivateSales.com a flash sale site promoted by Bangalore based TPS shopping Outlet Pvt Ltd has raised $5M from a private company. ThePrivateSales was founded in mid 2010 by Sunder and Sajan Gianchandani as a flash sales website offering high-end products by Indian and global fashion labels.

Investments will primarily used in adding more brands in the inventory and also increase man power and open offices and warehouses across all the metros. Good part of Investment will go into brand building and marketing,ThePrivateSales plans to invest heavily on online and viral marketing, they would spend nearly 1Crore on it.

Unlike FashionandYou, Theprivatesales deals with high end designer labels like Versace, Renata Riggi etc. Since founders have vast experience in fashion industry they are leveraging their experience in striking fantastic deals. I personally like the categorization of products at ThePrivateSales.com, easy to find products, and like FashionandYou where all brands of a particular category are placed in one webpage. Discounts offered by ThePrivateSales are pretty good compared to other flash sale sites.

ThePrivateSales.com claims to have above 4L registered users, their monthly sales are growing at 50-60%. Major competitors in this space are – 99Labels.com, Bagittoday, Fashionandyou.com, Exclusively.in

Lets have a look at ThePrivateSales monthly traction -

ThePrivateSales.com has healthy traction, and with investments coming in its all poised to go upwards.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Sequoia Capital India has invested $8M in Fashionandyou, a flash sale and invitation only shopping site. Fashionandyou is 1 year old startup founded by Pearl Uppal(ex Yahoo director sales) and Harish Bahl of Smile Interactive (Tyroo, Zoomtra, Quasar media). FashionandYou offers its registered users deals from designers at significant discounts, through limited time sales

FashionandYou will infuse the funds in their technology, supply chain and CRM. The runaway success for FashionandYou is providing its users premium brands in perfumes, clothing line, apparels, watches, accessories, jewelry category at 40-70% discount. The only demerit is their slow delivery process, they have not been able to fasten it and generally it takes 3-4 weeks to receive the shipment. With competition picking up in this space and investments coming in they should be able to focus on speedy delivery.

Lets take a look at FashionandYou monthly traction-:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	–	420K
Unique visitors (users)	–	420K
Page views	–	5.5M
Total visits	–	830K
Avg visits per visitor	–	2
Avg time on site	–	9:10

99labels.com, Exclusively.in(which recently raised $2.8M from Accel Partners and Helion Venture Partners) and Bagittoday.com are main competitors for FashionandYou.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

99labels is an event based member only ecommerce portal, this 1year old startup based out of New Delhi is targeting customers who adore luxurious clothing, high end accessories, lifestyle products and wants to buy them at a discounted rate.

The people behind this concept of exclusive event-based online sales are Anchal Jain, Ankur Prakash and Ishita Swarup, veterans of the fashion and communication industry.

99Labels has partnered with various national and international brands to sell their products to its members.  Membership to 99Labels.com is by invitation only i.e i can’t signup with them directly either i need to referred by an existing member or i need to request an invite code if i don’t know any existing member. This strategy is taken off from MLM (Multi level Marketing) companies and its designed to give them free publicity through WOM (word of mouth).

 Lets have a look at their monthly traction -:

Unique visitors	39K
Unique visitors	48K
Page views	220K
Total visits	51K
Avg visits per visitor	1.1
Avg time on site	7:00

99labels offers payment options like cash on delivery, internet banking and credit card, 99labels ship products within India and international location 3-5 days.

vcBytes review – Like their strategy of developing user base first through referrals and invitation and then pushing products, certainly conversion rate and sales will be higher. Is the system scalable? can they able to boast lacs of users, these are the questions i am left with.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com