New Delhi, Nov. 13 2020: Rapawalk, Bangalore based online footwear brand that offers a personalized service to its customers, has raised $3,00,000 in seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures.
The funds raised in this round will be used towards scaling up the business. Rapawalk plans to continue expanding their online business for the coming 12-15 months and also offer an omnichannel shopping experience to its customers.
Vinay Bansal, Founder & CEO, IPV says,” 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.”
The digital first footwear brand, founded in 2018 by IIM-Ahmedabad alumni Kashif Mohammad and Aravind Maddireddy, counts marquee investors like Raveen Sastry, co-founder Myntra, Sanjay Ramakrishnan, former Marketing Cgief, Myntra; and Ravi Garikipati, former CTO, Flipkart, among others.
Kashif Mohammad, Co-founder & CEO, Rapawalk said, “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.”
He further added, “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.”
Footwear in India is currently a $6 bn+ market growing at a fast 14.5% on a yearly basis. Branded footwear is only 45% of the market and is outpacing the unbranded footwear at a 19% Y-o-Y growth. Online penetration of the footwear sales stands at a small 11%, but experiencing an accelerated growth of 27% Y-o-Y.