According to people who are briefed on the matter said that Prosus Ventures who is the venture investment arm of Prosus, formerly named Naspers is in advanced stages of talks in order to join the funding round of the new venture of former Myntra CEO Amar Nagaram.
Nagaram’s new venture which is a fast fashion platform for Gen Z, is likely to be valued at $150-160 million after the investment as told by the people.
Last December Nagaram left Flipkart-owned Myntra as its chief executive, is now anticipated to launch the venture later this month, and has also named it Virgin which is housed under Ameyam Enterprises.
At present, the app is in beta testing with users that are being put on a waitlist before a formal launch. The ET that was reported in January said that Alpha Wave, which is formerly Falcon Edge and Accelhad has finalized their $25-30 million round at a $100 million valuation.
Also, Proses Ventures’s investment is a part of series- A funding. Still, the round is structured in multiple tranches and Proses is coming in at a higher valuation than earlier investors did.
One of the people briefed on the matter said that the first round is structured in multiple tranches such as series A1, A2, and so on. Also, Proses Ventures is in the last leg of signing the deal, while, the platform will be launched soon, as it is fetched at a valuation of over $150 million with Prose’s round.
Also, with the coming in of Proses Ventures at Virgin, the round size may increase by around $10 million. This mainly comes at a time when there is a visible slowdown in deals that makes it attractive terms across all stages.
It was once formally announced that it will be one of the biggest maiden institutional funding rounds for a new venture.
Nagaram had declined to comment. A spokesperson for Proses Ventures said it does not comment on market rumors and speculation.
ET previously reported a description on its website that Mukesh Bansal who is the founder of Cultfit and president at Tata Digital has also been an investor in the firm.
One of the people mentioned above said that the app is similar to Shien from India with a lot of focus on technology. They are also trying to have a go at demand-based manufacturing of fast fashion.
The trends have been changing fast and the idea is mainly to address this demand among Gen Z and new-age consumers, who are also really young.
Before starting Virgio, Nagaram worked at Flipkart for almost seven years before he decided to move to Myntra in 2019.
He was also elevated to CEO at the fashion retailer after the previous chief executive Anath Narayanan quit because of Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart in 2018.
