Bengaluru-based online footwear brand Rapawalk has raised $3,00,000 in seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures, one of the largest angel investment platforms in India.
The funds raised in this round will be focused towards scaling up its business. Rapawalk plans to continue expanding its online business for the coming 12-15 months and also offer an omnichannel shopping experience to its customers.
IPV Founder and CEO Vinay Bansal said, “We believe in the growth story of customised 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 personalised 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,” he added.
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.
Rapawalk Co-founder & CEO Kashif Mohammad said, “Personalisation 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 added, “Since our launch we have seen much stronger demand for personalised 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.”
Since its inception in 2018, the firm has recorded a 15X growth in sales volume in the last financial year, with a 40% cumulative monthly growth rate.
Footwear in India is currently a $6 billion 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.
