The Indian Thrasio Model
If there is something the Indian startup ecosystem loves, it is to bring to our shores successful business ideas that have worked in the West. Sometimes the ideas are great, sometimes they do not pan out at all. The pace of the transferability of these ideas is what plays the catalyst in how soon will you achieve the escape velocity that every venture capitalist dreams of. There is one such idea that has become every VC’s darling in the consumer startup ecosystem almost overnight. The name of the idea is the title of this piece.

On a routine call with one of my colleagues at another fund a few months back, the main takeaway from the conversation was that the Thrasio model is into the works and it is going to blow up in India in a huge way. First-mover advantage. That is what it meant. A potential market disruptor idea comes but once in a unicorn and that is when I started looking in deeper into this.

You know this idea is going to be a rocker when it has three things any kind of smart money (us) is looking for- sounds cool, growth and most importantly, profitability before a Series B round. A better explainer of the Thrasio model in India can be found here.

Over the course of the past couple months, these Thrasio-styled startups are all that people in my industry have been able to talk about. There are many potential pitfalls in the approach, but we don’t think about problems till they don’t come up.

There is strong money and a stronger pedigree of founders making a play in the industry- a recent example being Goat Labs, led by former Flipkart execs and backed by Tiger Global. Before that 10Club led a “seed” round of $40 million dollars.

The entire story is going to be under the lights of media, VC execs, the industry titans, and the consumers. Companies in this industry are going to be racing against getting the best tech, best analytics, fighting for acquisition for the best brands, employing the newest marketing techniques, and figuring out how to best build synergies between brands. More than about quality of apparels, this is about which company is able to best select and analyze data to make the proverbial dream house of brands that is truly going to cement the company’s future.

Until next time…
['An Anonymous Vc']
['Startups In India', 'Venture Capital', 'Thrasio', 'VC', 'India']