Glamplus Raises INR 2 Cr In Pre-Series A Round Led By Inflection Point Ventures Funds raised will be used for the enhancement of product and tech capabilities and business expansion
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Salon-focused SaaS platform Glamplus announced on Monday to have raised INR 2 crore in a pre-Series A funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures. Few of the other investors in this round are Anil G. (Bounce) Sachin Khandelwal (Sadhan Enterprise), Sravan Kumar (Transin), Abhishek Daiya (Byju's), and Anudeep Nagalia (Shadowfax). They have invested in a personal capacity.
Funds raised will be used for the enhancement of product and tech capabilities and business expansion. The funds will also be utilized in scaling to 3000 partners in the next six months along with the vertical expansion of the business line.
"Salons, spa,s and gyms form one of the largest portions of our discretionary spends. However, on the other side, salons run in a highly informal manner which gives them little insights about their customers, their spending patterns, and visits frequency. Glamplus has identified this opportunity and it has the potential to help salons and gyms to move from an informal to a formal economy and grow their business in the process," said Mitesh Shah, co-founder, Inflection Point Venture.
With an absence of a SaaS-based system for salons, the management of customers has been mostly offline. To help them bring their database and analytics online, Glamplus was launched in 2020. It offers an experience-based CRM solution for repeat engagement. With this platform, the salons (and other partners like gyms and spas) can manage their customers' appointment, staff management, and their suppliers through a simple dashboard. The platform also helps them with analytical reports to understand the needs of the customers, their visit patterns, and other insights which can help businesses to elevate the customer experience, the company shared.
"When we reached out to IPV, with such rich experience in beauty and wellness segment, they were convinced on the market upside potential and how this segment with evolve further with deep tech SaaS. IPV not just identifies the market sizing with respect to the salon partner ecosystem but also sees an opportunity to uplift the skill sets of the semi-skilled economy. In the last three months, we have seen traction of more than 500 partners joining Glamplus platform and higher platform adoption gives a belief to go deeper in tier-I and tier-II cities also," added Divyanshu Singh, co-founder, Glamplus.
Glamplus aims to digitize the informal economy of salons, gyms, and spas through an asset-light model and vertical integration like beauty products, hiring, and easy loans. This is done to create one collective ecosystem to improve customer experience. With the help of the portal, partners can discover information of customers for upselling and better retention. This is a step towards organizing the informal economy by standardizing the processes.
The startup has scaled to 500 paying partners in less than three months across three cities- Bengaluru, Delhi, and Pune.
Salon Industry is comprised of a $200 billion market with 15 per cent year-over-year growth and there is a huge potential to completely digitize this offline SMB economy. With more than 5.5 million salons in the country and over 10 million salons in SE Asia, the market size is only growing. Penetration of smartphones, post-Jio boom in tier-I and tier-II cities is resulting in SMBs quickly adopting technology. Glamplus aims to tap 30 per cent of this market potential in the next 2-3 years with higher engagement offerings and enhanced tech product capabilities.
