Former Myntra CEO’s Fashion Startup Virgio raises $161 Million

Amar Nagaram, the former CEO of Myntra and co-founder of the fashion startup Virgio, has raised $37 million in a new round of funding. The young company wants to build “a global fashion brand” from the South Asian market.

The Series A funding for Virgio was led by Prosus Ventures, Alpha Wave, and Accel. The one-year-old startup was valued at $161 million (post-money). (Virgio says it was started this year, but it hasn’t said how much it raised in its first round of funding.)

Virgio says that people’s tastes in fashion are changing quickly, and they aren’t happy with what’s already available. It tries to solve this problem by streamlining the design, manufacturing, and buying processes in “real time.” This gives Gen-Z and late-stage millennials a place to find and buy the latest trendy clothes.

Virgio has a wide variety of casual, party, and ethnic clothes. It adds new products every week, and customers get big discounts and free shipping.

Some people have said that the way the startup works is similar to that of the huge company Shein.

Nagaram, the founder and CEO of Virgio, said in a statement, “The fashion industry has always been based on depth and discount models.”

“Virgio’s core is its tech foundation, which is always watching how trends change on social media and predicting how much demand there will be for each trend. This information is then sent to our flexible and quick supply chain, which allows us to make the most stylish, elegant, and affordable line in almost real time. So, Virgio is the first to use the test-and-scale method, which makes runway fashion accessible and affordable for all consumers and gets rid of excess inventory for manufacturers, said Nagaram, a Flipkart veteran who was Myntra CEO from 2019 until he left the company last year.

The startup says that its full-stack approach is letting it cut the typical lead time of eight to ten months down to just one month. It said that its own app had already been downloaded more than 100,000 times. (On Sensor Tower, the app’s size is still too small for it to show many metrics.)

In India, there is a sizable demand for branded clothing that is not yet being satisfied. For example, only about 25% of fashion for women is brand-name clothing. So, the fashion industry in India is at a turning point. This is because of how social media is changing consumer tastes, how important it is for Gen Z to be unique, Ashutosh Sharma, Head of India Investments at Prosus Ventures, elaborated on this trend and how social commerce is being merged with social networking platforms in a recent statement.

We believe that Virgio’s tech-first concept, led by the company’s professional founding team, is the most promising way to capitalise on the promising fashion market in India. he said.

Mukesh Bansal, Kunal Shah, Binny Bansal, Bhavesh Agarwal, Vidit Aatrey, Saif Ali Khan, Sriharsha Majety, and Sameer Nigam were among the many other entrepreneurs who put money into the round.

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