Direct-to-consumer sampling platform Smytten has raised $6 million in Series A led by Fireside Ventures. The round saw participation from Sharrp Ventures (Mariwala family office), Survam Partners (Suman Kant Munjal family office), and Waao Partners (Pratul Shroff family office). Existing investor Roots Ventures also participated in the round.
Founded by ex-Googler, Swagat Sarangi, and ex-Unilever executive, Siddhartha Nangia, the focus is to digitize the pre-purchase product trial experience for consumers. With more than 5 million users, Smytten is one of the largest direct-to-consumer sampling platforms in India and offers this unique convenience to online consumers to try products at the comfort of their homes at a very minimal or no cost before they decide to buy, it said in a press release.
Swagat Sarangi and Siddhartha Nangia, Founders, Smytten said, “Pre-purchase buying experience will be the biggest enabler and will fuel the burgeoning Indian D2C market which is projected to touch $100 billion in next 4-5 years. We believe this sampling-led tried-and-tested method of customer engagement will change the way D2C brands and consumers interact, making it more immersive and experience-based. Smytten is poised to re-craft the standard playbook of brand creation with the deep tech solutions we are building based on the trial intent and feedback from millions of consumers.”
Smytten today hosts 700+ D2C brand partners on its platform across varied categories and enables millions of product sampling every month for them.
Varun Alagh, Co-founder of MamaEarth said “Our sampling ROI has been great on Smytten and it has helped us drive trials amongst a lot of first-time users for mamaearth very efficiently.”
The new investment will primarily be used for scaling up the user base and building many industry-first tech and data solutions to optimize the marketing funnel for D2C brands starting from new product development to consumer acquisition and retention. Also, the platform is going to invest heavily in creating a best-in-class servicing infrastructure across the country, to widen the product trial touch points and strengthen the online service delivery to better the pre-purchase buying experience for consumers at scale.
Kannan Sitaram, Venture Partner, Fireside Ventures, and new board member, Smytten said, “With D2C becoming mainstream, brand marketers need fresh, sharper solutions that can help in creating the right brand experience for consumers who are on the lookout for superior quality products. We, at Fireside, believe the development of an enabling ecosystem presents a great investable opportunity and will be a big game-changer for the consumer brand revolution that's shaping up in India."
Smytten had earlier raised an investment of $1.5 million in its pre-Series A from Roots Ventures. It also counts some marquee angel investors such as Rajan Anandan, ex-MD of Google India & South East Asia, and many other industry veterans as its early backers.
