BharatPe CEO, PayU's cofounder and others invest $15 million in an online textile marketplace

• Locofast has raised $15 million in a round co-led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Chiratae Ventures.
• The company has also raised debt from strategic partners such as Stride Ventures and BlackSoil Capital.
• Locofast wants to use this capital to expand to more than 15 cities in India, and launch new product categories as well.

Business-to-business (B2B) textile marketplace Locofast has raised $15 million in a round co-led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Chiratae Ventures, with participation from Kris Gopalakrishnan’s fund Axilor Ventures, BharatPe’s CEO Suhail Sameer, Park+’s CEO Amit Lakhotia and Uni’s Nitin Gupta.

Alongside equity, the company has also raised debt from strategic partners such as Stride Ventures and BlackSoil Capital. The investment was a part of Series A round.

Locofast was founded by serial entrepreneurs Deepak Wadhwa and Mohit Piplani, who previously founded a travel marketplace WeAreHolidays. The company wants to address the currently broken textile supply chain through a platform that connects vendors as well as suppliers.

The company claims to have rapidly expanded to onboard over 500 suppliers, who have collectively executed over 5,000 orders pan India. The company claims to have touched a supply chain of over 700 brands, including Zara, H&M, Primark and others.

Locofast wants to use this capital to expand to more than 15 cities in India, and launch new product categories as well. It will also look to expand its workforce and invest heavily in building technology to help small and medium enterprises (SME) to scale their business.

“Despite being a major contributor to India’s GDP [gross domestic product], the textile industry is fragmented and slow in terms of technological adoption. With our previous entrepreneurial experience coupled with technical expertise, on-ground study of the ecosystem and understanding of SME [small and medium enterprises] functioning, our mission is to enable a sophisticated tech-enabled platform for textile SMEs and empower them with market linkages from across the world,” Deepak Wadhwa, founder and chief executive (CEO) of Locofast, said.

The company aims to be the largest textile marketplace in Southeast Asia.

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