Pakistan’s largest beauty & fashion e-commerce platform Bagallery.com raises $900,000 from Lakson VC
Pakistan’s largest beauty and fashion e-commerce platform Bagallery.com on Thursday announced that it closed a $900,000 Pre-Series A funding round from Lakson Venture Capital (LVC).
Bagallery (Private) Limited started out in 2013 with simple Facebook and Instagram (@worldofbagallery) pages for beauty and fashion products, quickly garnering a large following with their influencer-driven model.
Motivated by the enormous demand the husband and wife co-founders, Salman and Mina, launched a native e-commerce platform with dedicated operations and fulfilment teams in 2017.
The company has since seen tremendous growth to become the beauty and fashion segment market leader and is ranked among the top e-commerce traffic generators in Pakistan with 94% female visitors.
“We are really excited to have received LVC’s backing at a time when Bagallery is growing rapidly. The funding will allow us to expand to multiple cities in Pakistan by upgrading our technology stack, inventory management systems and logistics partnerships to efficiently scale,” said Mina Salman, co-founder of Bagallery.com.
The fashion industry dominates the global B2C e-commerce space with a 30% share in total B2C e-commerce revenues.
According to Euromonitor, the beauty and personal care market in Pakistan is projected to be in excess of $30 billion by 2023. Bagallery focuses on authentic supply for products by entering into partnerships with likes of Unilever, Procter & Gamble, L’Oreal, Kiko Milano, SheIn et al. This gives Bagallery competitive access to brands sought by its target demographic consumers.
“The beauty & personal care market in Pakistan is projected to have billions in revenues over the next five years. This represents a tremendous opportunity for market leaders like Bagallery, especially at a time where internet adoption in Pakistan has attained critical mass with more than 80 million active users,” said Faisal Aftab, managing partner of Lakson VC.
“Bagallery is in line with our core investment philosophy of supporting strong teams with a proven business model and potential to scale,” said Babar Lakhani, CEO of LI.
Regionally, exit prospects of beauty & fashion e-commerce plays have reaped big returns for investors.
UAE-based Namshi.com was acquired by Emaar Malls PJSC (Noon.com) in 2017 for $280 million. Myntra in India, one of the early players in this space, was acquired by Flipkart in 2014 for $300 million. Similarly, Nykaa in India was valued at $723 million in 2019, raising $14 million from TPG Growth.
Faisal Aftab and Babar Lakhani have also joined Bagallery’s Board of Directors.