Hit The Mark, the parent company responsible for operations of baby apparel and clothing platform Hopscotch, is looking to raise about US $ 50-75 million (Rs 352-528 crore) by mandating Barclays, global investment bank, to scout for new investors. Rahul Anand, the chief executive of Hopscotch, has given a confirmation to ET about the development without mentioning anything about the targeted valuation the company is aiming for its latest capital growth.
Presently, the company has upturned about US $ 50 million in the equity financing field with renowned investors such as Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin, who invested in the organization through Velos Partners, his investment firm, in 2015.
Hopscotch has also got LionRock Capital on board, which is a Singapore-based investor involved with ride-hailing majors Go-Jek and Didi Chuxing, Wei Yan, cofounder of Amazon-owned Diapers.com, India Infoline Ventures and RPG Ventures, among others, as investors.
The development falls in line with the increase in interest shown by global investors in the Indian broader baby products and apparel segment for at least the top companies thriving in the space.
The invest interest had seen a peak when Alibaba-backed Babytree was valued at US $ 2 billion after raising capital from Alibaba in May. Hopscotch, a brainchild of Harvard graduate Anand, retails via its namesake platform. Operating on a fast-fashion model, it accomplishes the launch of hundreds of styles within days to rapidly tap latest fashion trends.
“We expose hundreds of data-steams to a machine learning model and come up with demand forecasts. To put things in perspective, we launch more styles per day than typical brands do in six months. We can identify bestsellers and inventory which does not sell within two days.” – Rahul Anand, Chief Executive, Hopscotch
The funding will be partially used to launch an omni-channel strategy as per Anand.
According to the CEO, Hopscotch recorded gross sales of Rs 350 crore for calendar year 2018, and is projecting Rs 900 crore in 2019.