Bengaluru based Fabulyst, a deep technology enabled virtual stylist, has raised Rs 1.4 cr in seed round from iBHubs.co, a pan India startup hub. Fabulyst was founded in June 2016 by the co-founders of Doctl.com Komal Prajapati, Vikas Jethnani, Vishal Chitravanshi along with Raj Parakh, co-founder of lakecitytutors.com.
Fabulyst is an AI that enables styling theory assisted shopping at fashion e-commerce stores. The whole idea is to address natural user intents and queries in shopping workflow and hence increase conversion rate. The system uses proprietary algorithms (patents under progress) that combine proprietary deep learning and 40000+ styling rules to work in tandem.
As per a study by Baymard Institute, 84% of fashion e-commerce websites have poor/mediocre filter experience. Fabulyst co-founder Komal Prajapati says ‘‘Consumers shop only what they understand and feel confident about. When it comes to fashion, the biggest doubt for consumers is to understand how any style shown on a model would work for them. In stores there are salespeople and friends, to help with purchase decisions. Imitating the offline shopping experience with an online virtual stylist, can lead to increased sales for web-based retailers.’’
‘A recent survey by Nuance revealed that most consumers (89% to be exact) want to engage in conversation with virtual assistants to quickly find information instead of searching through web pages or apps on their own’
While the Indian market is still emerging, mature western markets have shown good reception to third party tech-enabled solutions like Trufit.com, metail.com etc in this space. These solutions exist in a similar space but do not compete or interfere with Fabulyst’s enabled user scenarios. The global fashion e-commerce market is estimated to be at $80 Bn in revenue. Fabulyst, being the world’s first B2B player to enable users’ body type, trends, occasion based user queries over a plain e-commerce inventory, aims at it’s directly addressable market of $32 Bn.
The startup plans to use the raised funds in improving its existing technology and acquiring global e-commerce clients. Part of the funds will be used to upgrade the consumer interfaces for global demographics.
Talking about the funding, iB Hubs CFO Mr. Rambabu said, “What excites me about Fabulyst is a passionate team that can operate lean and with ruthless prioritizations to build things that matter to the end user. With a unique combination of both product pedigree and technical capability, they are solving a hard but very real problem with AI in consumer shopping journey. It’s a classic example of innovation by the use of deep tech.”