Indian Angel Network (IAN), India’s first and Asia’s largest angel network, announced its investment in Shopatplaces, an online e-commerce portal that offers authentic products from places famous for them, at best buy prices. IAN investor member, B Hari who has also joined Shopatplaces’ board, led this round of investment.
One no longer has to travel to Kashmir for Pashmina Shawls, Rajasthan for Hand Block Printed Apparel, Hyderabad for Pearls or Kanpur to get genuine Leather products. Shopatplaces brings all these and much more in customers’ reach easily. Solving the problems of Availability, Authenticity and Pricing, it is blowing up the market for these products, created by artisans and small businesses. The company was founded in 2012 by an execution-oriented team with a background in Supply Chain and Investment Banking. One of the co-founders, Sherfur Rehman, an MBA from NITIE has previously worked with Cadburys in Supply Chain & Procurement Team and the other co-founder, Zuhaib Khan, has extensively worked with Investment Banking & Private Equity firms like JP Morgan, Mape Advisory and Casa Capital. Shopatplaces is focused on Apparel and Accessories category right now and also offers carefully curated Jewelry, Bags, Shoes, Home Decor and Fragrances to its customers. The company will enter into Personal Care category and cover all 29 states of India on the product portfolio side in the next month. After that customers will be able to get locally sourced products from different countries via Shopatplaces.
B. Hari, Lead IAN investor commented on the company’s growth strategy saying,
“At IAN we were extremely excited with Zuhaib and Sherfur’s passion, enthusiasm, and business acumen to build a great company. And combined with Shopatplaces’ scalable online experience to well thought through customer base. Shopatplaces is poised to pioneer the online shopping experience of specialty merchandise from across the nation and then from across the globe.”
Shopatplaces is an online private label which delivers authentic products from places famous for them, at best buy prices. Solving actual problems of customers including Availability, Authenticity, and Pricing, it has the potential to, disrupt an entire industry globally. Company’s supply chain backend is highly robust and scalable, thereby ensuring high quality products get delivered at a great price to the end customers. Based in New Delhi, it is delivering products across the world since last 3 years and delighting customers
Zuhaib Khan, Co-founder of Shopatplaces said,
“IAN’s investment will enable us to further build our Product Portfolio and Service. We aim to delight our customers with the widest range of high quality products, sourced directly from the places they are created at.”
he further added,
“Moving ahead, we plan to improve Marketing to reach our target customer segment and scale up the Technology Front-end and Back-end Infrastructure. We aim to be the Top of the Mind recall for the customers when they think of locally crafted products from any city. On the technology front, an app will be rolled out for customers to shop on the go”