Boticca.com, a fashion accessories-only focused website, has closed a GBP2.5m series A financing from UK-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures and high net worth individuals in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The individual investors include Turkish entrepreneur Sina Afra, chief executive and chairman of Markafoni and former European director of M&A for eBay.
This marks Boticca’s second round of financing following a GBP1.5m seed round in June 2011 led by French Internet entrepreneurs’ fund ISAI, who also contributed to this round.
Launched in October 2010, Boticca.com enables customers to connect with, and purchase directly, from professional small and medium brands all over the world. Boticca has sourced over 330 creative independent designers and emerging brands, and now offers more than 10,000 products from 40 countries around the world on every continent. Top brands on Boticca make annual sales in the hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Eina Ahluwahlia, the founder of one of the brands based in India, says: “The kind of reach Boticca has brought us is unbelievable. The exposure we have experienced as a brand would never have been possible without them, and I really think the team has truly lived up to their motto of shining the torch on emerging designers and sharing them with the world.”
With this new round of financing, the company plans to use the funds to keep growing its team, further globalise by entering new markets and offering local language versions of its website, and accelerate its marketing investment to keep building its customer database which now stands at over 400,000 users.
MMC Ventures partner Jon Coker (pictured) says: “We are delighted to have invested in Boticca, we believe there is a huge opportunity for them in a fragmented market. We have been extremely impressed by Avid and Kiyan, their vision for the business and the culture they have built in the team and are very much looking forward to working with them.”
“We’re very excited by this new round of investment which is a testament to the pioneering and sustainable business model the entire team has built these past 2.5 years. We look forward to working with our new investors to continue our international expansion and give independent brands the recognition and distribution they deserve.” says Kiyan Foroughi, co-founder and chief executive of Boticca.
