Chumbak introduces apparel range, looks to consolidate business

Company is charting international expansion next year and is eyeing the US, West Asia, Japan and Hong Kong for the same

As lifestyle brand Chumbak eyes rapid expansion in India as well as globally, the company has added fashion apparel and accessories for men and women to its current range of offerings. The five-year old company had been focused on home products and accessories till now.

"This completes the Chumbak story of what we are offering to our customers. We will now cater to the much larger lifestyle segment with our apparel and home collection thus taking a great leap to expand our offerings in the market. We have revamped our entire online web store keeping in mind the introduction of apparel as a category," said Vivek Prabhakar, co-founder and chief executive officer of Chumbak.

Chumbak is charting international expansion next year and is eyeing the US, West Asia, Japan and Hong Kong for the same. It is looking to raise its Series C during the March quarter of the current financial year for the same.

The new bucket called 'Collection One' will include western apparels, bags and jewellery and footwear. To start with, about 70% will be women apparels.

While majority of the company's sales come through its own portal, Chumbak has also partnered with other online marketplaces like Myntra, Jabong, Koovs and app-based fashion retailers like Roposo, Voonik and Wooplr. He added the company looks to break even by May-June 2016.

About 70% of the company's sales come from its offline stores. In the online sales, close to 60% is generated through Chumbak.com alone and the rest through partner e-tailers. "While online stores help us to scale up, offline stores build our brand," said Prabhakar.

Currently, close to 60% of its revenue comes from home segment and 40% from accessories space. "This is expected to become 35% from apparel and the rest 65% from home and accessories by the end of the December quarter," said Prabhakar.

Chumbak, which also has an app, is seeing significant shift in traffic from desktop users to mobile users. Currently, desktop-generated traffic is close to 52%, while last year it was about 80%.

Chumbak, whose primary customers are in the age group of 18-30 years, has 12 stores across seven cities in India. The retail brand is adding two stores every month and targets 25 stores in the next six months across the country.

Chumbak had raised $2 million in Series A funding from Seedfund India in 2012 and Series B from Matrix Partners in May 2014.