After facing a disappointing Series A funding round, Buttercups, a Bengaluru-based lingerie startup has received new funding.

The failure of the round has been difficult for the company which had to switch to a low-inventory model of manufacturing, according to founder and CEO Arpita Ganesh. Ganesh is also a Google SMB Heroes Award 2017 winner.

“The overall space of online brands e-commerce and specifically lingerie saw poor investor response last year as the investors saw very high burn models and struggled with the business models of these companies,” Kanwaljit Singh, founder of investment firm Fireside Ventures said.

Buttercups, in addition to selling lingerie, also allows customers to receive customized fitting and the ability to schedule appointments with the company. The new funding will assist the company after the result of the Series A round.

Based on the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, the 2017 financial year showed revenues of Rs 1.04 crore for the company, less than those seen by other companies in the sector such as Clovia.

“Sales dropped from 300-400 orders per month to 100 orders a month by November. The fitting rooms, which were bringing 50% of our orders, were also shut,” Ganesh said.

The recent funding comes from Rajan Anandan, an angel investor who went through Lets-Venture to provide funding for the startup. Additionally, previously existing investors in the company Kanwaljit Singh and Anand Chandrasekaran also contributed. The total amount raised by the company is now at Rs 7.6 crore.

“We were in the market to raise $1 million early last year, but investors were wary about the lingerie brand business and were concerned about scalability,” Ganesh said.

In addition to switching their model of manufacturing and moving manufacturing operations from China to India, as a result of the lack of funding in the Series-A round the company also had to close two fitting rooms, and lose 25 percent of their team.

However, in recent months, the company has increased their number of orders received to around 200 a month, opened a new fitting room, and has plans to release more bras in different categories including sports, nursing and maternity. These bras will be available via third-party sites such as Amazon and Myntra.

(Picture Courtesy: https://buttercups.in/)