Online discovery platform Smytten has raised $200,000 in seed funding led by Rimpal Chawla, ex-MD of Credit Suisse Asset Management India and Anuj Srivastava, CEO of Livspace and a prolific angel investor.
Co-founded by two graduates of Indian School of Business - Siddhartha Nangia and Swagata Sarangi. Swagata was most recently heading business marketing at Google, and Siddhartha is a FMCG industry veteran and was a director at Unilever UK before taking the entrepreneurial plunge. As someone who spent more than 15 years in various regions outside India (Middle East , South East Asia and Europe), Siddhartha felt a huge lack of quality of service for consumers in the premium space in India.
Swagata too saw a need to provide quality service for high end brands in a crowded and cluttered digital space by building a dedicated platform to reach and engage the premium audience. Smytten is also boosting it's team and building their core leadership team by hiring people from ISB, IIM and MICA with significant industry experience.
Smytten differentiation is its heavy focus on curation, offered by very few platforms in India. The company caters to individual consumer needs, helping them sift through the information overload in the process connecting brands with right audience.
Said Swagat, “Despite the huge market for premium products and services, the information available is fragmented, interaction with brands is sub optimal, trial avenues limited, and the sector has massive consumer trust issues due to counterfeit products.
He adds, “Smytten solves these challenges and offers what consumers in this segment value - one stop discovery, free trials for experiencing the brands, and recommendations for making purchasing decisions. Further, our personalization features, made possible with our backend algorithm, focus on analytics, allow us to curate offerings for consumers as per their individual preference.”
Smytten also offers assisted shopping and for the more advanced shopper, features such as customized offers and the ability to build their own liking list for regular purchases. Smytten has tied up with more than 50+ premium/super premium brands to offer consumers genuine sampling experiences and the opportunity to purchase them online.
Siddharth said, “By offering consumers premium brands, sampling opportunities, curated content, and expert recommendations we are put at the high end of ecommerce and engagement. We believe we have hit the sweet spot with both consumers and brands. Our immediate focus is India and over the next three years we aim to be a global destination.”
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