Online premium fashion platform Purple Style Labs Pvt. Ltd has acquired multi-brand e-commerce website Pernia’s Pop Up Shop for an undisclosed sum of money.
Purple Style said in a statement on Tuesday the move is in line with its strategy of building a comprehensive omni-channel fashion platform.
Following the acquisition, Pernia’s creative head Pernia Qureshi has stepped down from her position. The company’s intellectual property and businesses will now be completely owned by Purple Style, the statement added.
Purple Style Labs founder Abhishek Agarwal said the platform is also looking to invest in early-stage Indian designer brands as part of its strategy of augmenting the supply, distribution and inventory of products. “The vision [for PSL] was to create a platform for Indian fashion, which is currently highly fragmented across designers,” said Agarwal.
Purple Style sells products of more than 500 premium brands in India. It also provides designer brands with sales, marketing and technical support. The company says it recently invested in House of Masaba, the luxury fashion label launched by fashion designer Masaba Gupta. Last month, House of Masaba raised $1 million (around Rs 6.8 crore) in an angel round of funding led by Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal.
Founded in 2015, Purple Style Labs has raised more than $8 million since its inception from investors such as Binny Bansal, Raj Soin, Navroz Udwadia, Rahul Kayan, Jitendra Gupta and Astarc Ventures.
The platform says it plans to open 10 international and 20 domestic stores in the next 24 months. It aims to achieve annual revenue of $42 million across all its channels in the same period.
Deals in the designer apparel segment
Activity in the designer apparel segment has picked up recently, with investors and corporate houses acquiring or placing bets on brands, as the market for premium and luxury fashion in the country steadily grows.
Last month, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd, a unit of Aditya Birla Group, agreed to acquire a 51% stake in Finesse International Design Pvt. Ltd, which owns bespoke apparel brand Shantanu & Nikhil brand, for around Rs 60 crore.
In September last year, Reliance Industries Ltd unit Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd acquired a 16.31% stake in Genesis Colors, which owns fashion label Satya Paul, for Rs 34.80 crore. Reliance Retail has also partnered with several international fashion brands, including Burberry, Emporio Armani, Kate Spade and Salvatore Ferragamo.
