[Funding Alert] Rapawalk Raises $300,000 Seed Fund From Inflection Point Ventures Funds raised will be used for business growth and to offer an omnichannel shopping experience to its customers
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Bangalore-based online footwear brand Rapawalk on Thursday announced to have raised $300,000 in seed round led by angel investment platform Inflection Point Ventures (IPV).
The funds raised in this round will be focused towards scaling up their business and the firm further plans to continue expanding their online business for the coming 12-15 months.
"We believe in the growth story of customized footwear in India, especially with our insight that every customer's foot is different, and standard shoe sizes are not enough for the discerning customer. Rapawalk being in the D2C segment offers a great personalized footwear design and shopping experience while managing the entire customer journey. Their light inventory business model and continued growth path on online platforms stands Rapawalk in good stead to reach further heights," commented IPV founder and chief executive officer Vinay Bansal, in a statement.
"Personalization is the future of fashion. We want to give ultimate power to every customer to create their own footwear, thereby giving them immersive shopping experience. Footwear shopping always had inherent challenge related to fitting; we at Rapawalk are driven by the vision to make footwear for all foot shape and sizes," said Rapawalk co-founder and chief executive officer Kashif Mohammad.
Launched in 2018, the company has recorded a fifteen-fold growth in sales volume in the last financial year with a 40 per cent cumulative monthly growth rate.
"Since our launch we have seen much stronger demand for personalized footwear. We are committed to our vision of bringing product and sizing innovation and become the top footwear brand in country. We are delighted to partner with IPV towards building Rapawalk, we believe, we will benefit massively from IPV's strong ecosystem of leaders," Mohammad added.
Footwear in India is currently a $6 billion-plus market growing at a fast 14.5 per cent on a yearly basis. Branded footwear is only 45 per cent of the market and is outpacing the unbranded footwear at a 19 per cent year on year (Y-o-Y) growth. Online penetration of the footwear sales stands at a small 11 per cent, but experiencing an accelerated growth of 27 per cent Y-o-Y.
