 "Rent a fashionable wardrobe for those special occasions with Flyrobe")
Flyrobe, a Mumbai-based online fashion rental service, is taking the fashion world by storm. Launched in September last year by a bunch of IIT graduates, the startup claims to have transacted with 1,000 customers already, and closed 2015 with 100 customers on a single day – when it was just 15 weeks old.
The concept of collective consumption is still nascent in India and has largely seen action in the transportation, accommodation, and food and beverages sectors. But online fashion rental firms like Flyrobe, Klozee, The Clothing Rental, and SwishList are giving the story of India’s shared economy a twist.
“We want to be to clothes what Uber and Ola are to cabs,” Sreejita Deb, their chief business officer, says.
Flyrobe estimates that the fashion rental market, including western and ethnic wear in large Indian cities, is worth $4-5 billion. And in this space, it claims to be surging ahead.
“Around 40,000 people have downloaded our app, and there are 14,000 who open it on a monthly basis,” says Sreejita.
Why buy a QuirkBox dress for INR 9,500 ($142), when one can hire it from Flyrobe at almost one-tenth the price?
They came together over the belief that the application of ‘shared economy’ to fashion could be very powerful.
“We started this company because we were really intrigued by the concept of a sharing economy. The technical challenges of on-demand coupled with fashion, which has its own complexities of size, brands, and personal preferences, drew me to this space,” says Tushar.
This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.
