Smytten-India’s largest tech-enabled product discovery & trial platform which is revolutionizing the pre-purchase experience for millions of online consumers, has raised INR 100 crore in Pre-Series B led by Fireside Ventures and Roots Ventures. The round also saw participation from Sharrp Ventures (Harsh Mariwala family office), Waao Partners (Pratul Shroff Family Office), Survam Partners (Munjal Family Office) and Sattva Group Family Office.
Over a half a decade now, Smytten has been transforming the pre-purchase product trial experience for consumers by helping them to try many new products and brands at the comfort of their homes with just a click of a button. Smytten is rapidly gaining popularity amongst millennial consumers and has witnessed an explosive growth in its user base in the last 9-12 months. With more than 10 million users, Smytten is one of the leading innovators in consumer tech, fuelling the growth of a potentially large D2C market in India that’s expected to be a $100 Billion market by 2025.
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The new investment will primarily be used for building many industry-first tech and data solutions with advanced applications of AI & ML to optimize the marketing funnel for D2C brands starting from new product development to consumer acquisition and retention. Also, the platform is going to invest heavily in creating a best-in-class servicing infrastructure across the country, to widen the product trial touch points and strengthen the online service delivery to better the pre-purchase buying experience for consumers at scale.
Smytten is planning to double down on its hiring across supply chain, marketing and other key functions. Smytten today employs more than 300 people with a very vibrant culture and strong focus on talent retention. It is scaling up its leadership team to fuel the next phase of growth across its offices in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.
On the fundraise Siddhartha Nangia, Co-founder, of Smytten said, “We believe sampling-led tried-and-tested method of customer engagement will change the way D2C brands and consumers interact, making it more immersive and experience-based. Smytten has re-crafted the standard playbook of brand creation with the deep tech solutions built based on trial intent and feedback from millions of consumers. It is empowering the next generation of D2C & multi-national brands with actionable insights and a captive audience to scale their business fast. We are launching a new brand a day on our platform and bringing more than 15-20 new products every day to consumers to try. We are thankful to all our brand partners who have placed trust and confidence as we create a robust D2C ecosystem.”
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Swagat Sarangi, Co-Founder at Smytten added, “Our mission is to democratize access and experience of premium & D2C brands for the Indian consumers by offering direct-to-home product trials. We are building a robust tech platform to make the pre-purchase journey and decision-making process of consumers very seamless by bringing in the power of trial experiences, data, content and community all together.”
Kannan Sitaram, Partner at Fireside Ventures said, “We continue to believe in the development of an enabling ecosystem for the consumer brand revolution that’s shaping up in India and Smytten is right at the forefront of it. Their integrated approach to consumer funnel and technological innovations to solve the key challenges faced by many D2C brands, makes them the unequivocal leader in a potentially $10B sampling and advertising market. The data-driven experiential solutions are already making waves and Smytten is becoming the first port of call for every consumer brand.”
Japan Vyas Managing Partner at Roots Ventures quoted, “Smytten has grown more than 12X by revenue since the time we invested. We have participated in every round of fund raise they had and will continue to back them in future with even stronger conviction. We are very confident that Smytten is going to be a very large, profitable and fundamentally strong business in the consumer-tech space globally.”
Smytten hosts 900+ brand partners on its platform across lifestyle categories, ranging from fragrances, beauty & makeup, male grooming, food & beverages, baby & mother care, health & wellness and offers product samples to consumers across these categories to help them make the right purchase decisions. It also offers its brand partners a suite of services, data & insights needed for scaling up customer acquisition, product development & channel expansion. Many leading D2C & multi-national brands like Mamaearth, Plum, mCaffeine, WOW Skin, Maybelline, Man Matters, Bodywise, The Man Company, & more are already leveraging Smytten’s platform extensively to reach relevant users at scale and deliver first-hand product experience through sampling.
To date, Smytten has raised more than $20 million in institutional funding. Smytten also counts some marquee angel investors such as Rajan Anandan, ex-MD of Google India & South East Asia, and many other industry veterans as its early backers.
