E Shakti, a women’s fashion brand based in Chennai, Tuesday said it has raised ₹75 crore from Paragon Partners Growth Fund-I, a private equity fund focused on mid-market segments.
Paragon Partners was founded by Siddharth Parekh and Sumeet Nindrajog in 2015. It invests primarily in consumer discretionary, financial services, infrastructure services (asset light), industrials and healthcare services. It has a corpus of $120 million and invests $10-20 million in firms.
Founded by B.G. Krishnan, a first-generation entrepreneur, eShakti is one of the few international consumer brands from India that enjoys a leadership position in the US with presence in Australia and Canada also, a company statement said.
“The investment from Paragon Partners is primarily needed for growth as we are building a multinational consumer brand with a global footprint. We are excited by the endorsement and opportunity that Paragon’s investment represents and we look forward to building on our history of strong growth based on a robust value proposition that gives us both scalability and a competitive advantage,” said Krishnan.
So far, the firm has raised capital from venture capital investors including IDG Ventures, IvyCap and Infina Finance. “eShakti is one of the early movers in addressing an underserved need for make-to-order apparel for women in the western markets. With its disruptive operating model combined with superior quality of design, fabrics and speed of execution, eShakti has been able to build a strong and growing community of loyal customers in the US,” said Siddharth Parekh, co-founder and senior partner, Paragon Partners.
This is Paragon Partners sixth investment from its maiden fund.
“Given its lean operating model and strong technology back-end, eShakti can ramp up operations and scale quickly. Despite customized offerings, eShakti’s return rates are relatively low, further validating the robustness of the design and production processes,” said Sumeet Nindrajog, co-founder and senior partner, Paragon Partners.
Paragon’s other investments include Maini Precision Products Ltd, Cravatex Brands and InCred. In September 2017, one of the fund’s early portfolio companies, Capacit’e Infraprojects Ltd, went public in an initial public offering that witnessed an oversubscription of 186 times.
Source: Mint