How Souled Store is riding young India's swelling pop culture wave

Until a few years ago, no marketplace – be it online or offline – could be called a one-stop shop for official pop culture merchandise. Growing fandoms in India for brands like Marvel, DC, Harry Potter, and Star Wars gave rise to one such platform called The Souled Store, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) apparel platform for pop culture enthusiasts.

The platform offers a wide selection of official merchandise, from various brands, to meet the needs of Potterheads and Trekkies alike.

The firm recently raised Rs 135 crore – around $16.4 million – in funding led by Xponentia Capital. This capital will aid the company in expanding its offline presence. The company’s existing investors include Elevation Capital and RPSG Capital.

Founded in June 2013 by a quartet of pop culture aficionados with a cupboard full of t-shirts, The Souled Store began its journey as a bootstrapped start-up with an investment of Rs 1.75 lakh. Since then, its founders Vedang Patel, Aditya Sharma, Rohin Samtaney, and Harsh Lal have grown from cupboards to warehouses.

Today, aside from its e-commerce website, the company is operating several offline stores and is looking to further expand its offline footprint.

“One of our biggest growth levers at the moment is our offline stores. We currently have 12 stores, of which eight were opened in the last year itself. We have another 4 or 5 more in the pipeline,” Vedang Patel, CEO, The Souled Store, told Business Standard. “Each of our stores turned profitable from the day they were launched, and we are aiming to reach 100 to 200 stores in the next three years.”

Patel, a mechanical engineer by trade, started his career at TresVista – a boutique financial services firm – where he crossed paths with Sharma and Samtaney. The trio identified a gap in the market for official merchandise, which gave birth to The Souled Store.

Pop culture, which can be defined as modern popular culture transmitted via the mass media and aimed particularly at younger people, changes rapidly based on trends and events, be it movies, TV shows, sports, or music. The space, therefore, has a lot of market potential.

The Souled Store offers official merchandise for brands like Marvel, DC, Netflix, Star Wars, and Harry Potter, among others. Its roster consists of a bevy of products ranging from t-shirts, hoodies, boxers, backpacks, and shoes, to socks, pins, badges, etc. “Pop culture is our design language. We do pay royalties to our partner brands but we sell them all under The Souled Store brand,” Patel said. 

The firm entered a fragmented market which was relatively untapped. The Souled Store, Patel says, had great brand recognition from the start. E-commerce giants like Flipkart and Amazon do not offer many niche pop culture merchandise offerings, giving the company another advantage.

“Around 30 per cent of our products are manufactured in-house while the rest is outsourced to various parts of the country. We strongly believe that our products should be made in India,” he added.

The Souled Store’s target audience is young Indians in the age group of 16-30 years, a bulk of which is middle class - the biggest segment in India.

According to Patel, the brand has amassed a cult-like following among the youth. “Our design-first thinking, high product quality, and deep understanding of the youth have helped us become a truly distinguished brand,” he said.

This “cult-like following”, as Patel puts it, has translated into impressive growth metrics for the company. The Souled Store is sitting at an annualised revenue of over Rs 450 crore in terms of the gross merchandise value (GMV) and has raised Rs 85 crore to date. Currently, 70 per cent of the company’s revenue comes from its app and website, 15 per cent from offline stores, and another 15 per cent from online marketplaces.

“We currently have 5 million registered customers on our platform. We are expecting to end this year with a revenue of Rs 240 crore, up from Rs 140 crores last year,” Patel revealed. Around 60 per cent of the firm’s revenue comes from outside the top 10 cities and the new offline stores will deepen the firm’s presence in tier 2 and 3 cities.

Alongside its offline expansion, the company is eyeing Rs 1,500 crore in revenue over the next three to four years, after which it plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO). “We aim to build India’s largest casual wear destination for the youth,” Patel added.