New Delhi: Fashion-tech platform Virgio, founded by the former CEO of Myntra, Amar Nagaram, aims to become a house of brands by foraying into multiple fashion categories.
Talking to ETRetail, Nagaram said, “We are solving the building blocks of how a fashion-tech company should be. We’re looking at other categories such as ethnic-wear. As a fashion-tech company, we will be building a house of brands.”
Founded in 2022, Virgio is a direct-to-consumer fashion-tech startup, which sells women western wear and promotes circularity and sustainable fashion practices.
The fashion brand primarily sells via its website and marketplaces. Commenting on offline plans, Nagaram said that the retailer is on track to open its first brand store in Bengaluru by the end of this year.
“We want to build an offline store which blurs the lines between offline and online for the consumer, especially in terms of the width and the inventory. The customer should not be constrained by the store.”
Without sharing Virgio’s revenue numbers, Nagaram claimed that the brand is growing by almost 50 per cent. “The number of customers we got in April was greater than combined in January, February and March. It has been a very good month-on-month growth for us. We’re growing almost 50%.”
With an average selling price of Rs 2,100, the startup is enjoying an average order value of nearly Rs 10,000, Nagaram stated.
Backed by Accel and Prosus, Virgio, last year October announced that it was making a pivot to focus on sustainable clothing.
Explaining the shift in the retailer’s offerings, he said, “The reason why fast fashion is surviving is because the so-called existing sustainable brands are super expensive. Also, slow fashion brands are preaching to consumers to not buy too often. On both ends of the spectrum, they’ve polarized the consumer. For me, sustainability is about zero waste rather than disposable ways. So, we start right from the fabric.”
Further adding to the brand’s marketing strategy, he stated, “We are not broadcasting to the entire world. Our marketing team has been very scientific to find the cohort of users, who connect to what we are trying to say. There are signals, as simple as people who are taking BluSmart as a cab – that is a customer we’re going after.”
Virgio has raised over USD 30 million in funding. Declining the reports of the company returning capital to investors after the pivot, Nagaram said that the fashion retailer has only bought back a small number of shares from one of its angel investors due to a conflict of interest.
