French Crown Raises 2 Crores From Velocity

● Indian D2C fashion brand and Shark Tank contestant – French Crown has raised Rs 2 crores from Velocity.in, India’s largest revenue-based financier

● Based out of Surat district in Gujarat, French Crown is a sustainable menswear fast fashion brand that plans on leveraging the capital to build its inventory

● Velocity.in leverages online data to offer non-dilutive, collateral-free growth capital within a week

Bengaluru, 27th April 2022: Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand French Crown, a premium menswear brand that makes sustainable clothing, has raised Rs 2 crores from Velocity.in, India’s largest revenue-based financier.

Launched in 2017 by the brother duo – Bhavdip Ghevariya and Ilesh Ghevariya, French Crown is a premium fast fashion brand that sells over 3,000 SKU ranging from suits and shirts to boxers via their website. The brand today has its presence in 84 countries worldwide and generates over 60% of its revenues from outside India.

“The reason most brands only launch fresh stock twice a year is because of deadstock. In the apparel industry, the deadstock ratio is typically around 30 percent. However, at French Crown, we have negligible deadstock given our investments in the supply chain over the years. Further, we have identified niches like customizable products and plus-sized clothing, where competition is low and margins are high,” said Ilesh Ghevariya, Co-founder of French Crown.

“Our business model is unique in the sense that we launch more than 200 designs every week. This is possible due to our direct relationship with multiple textile mills and fast inventory turnover which enable us to refresh our range regularly as opposed to once in six months like most other brands.” Ilesh added.

French Crown’s unique designs and quality have been a hit amidst consumers, especially international ones. At its current annual run rate of Rs 72 crores, the business is today profitable with a net margin of 20%.

Inspired by the demand for their product and growing top line, the duo appeared on Shark Tank with the objective of raising financing to plug their rising working capital requirements. Despite an audacious vision of making French Crown the first truly global fashion brand based out of India and a phenomenal growth trajectory, they were unable to close a deal on the show.

Talking about the financing, Bhavdip said, “The entire process of raising financing from Velocity has been extremely seamless and wrapped up in a few days. Our business is such that we have a recurring requirement to stock up on inventory, in Velocity we have found a partner that can scale with us and help us finance these expenses without diluting any equity for the foreseeable future.”

The value of the global men’s wear market is estimated to be around 600 billion USD in 2022 and is expected to rise to 740.98 billion USD by 2025. French Crown plans on carving out a chunk of this market and reach around Rs 1,500 crore in sales by 2024.

Speaking about the round of financing, Atul Khichariya, Co-founder & COO of Velocity, said, “We were impressed with the ingenuity that Bhavdip and Ilesh have displayed while building the business ground up. Their revenue numbers, inventory turnover, and deadstock ratio are simply staggering and unheard of in the fast fashion industry. We hope to work with French Crown for the foreseeable future as they continue their phenomenal growth trajectory and deliver on their vision of making in India for the world.”

Velocity.in, a Bengaluru-based fintech, is India’s largest revenue-based financier. The company commenced operations in early 2020 and has since worked with over 3,000 e-commerce businesses. With over Rs 2,100 crore of fundable revenues connected to Velocity’s platform, the fintech has already processed 400+ investments across 300+ companies.