Increff, a technology and analytics enterprise, which recently raised US $ 3 million in 2019 from Flipkart’s co-founder, Binny Bansal and 021 Capital, aims to forge new partnerships to expand its business across the globe.
In an age of instant gratification lifestyles, retailers have had to flip their supply chain processes overnight to evolve, innovate and react nimbly to customer demands – right from retail stores and inventories to a consumers’ doorstep.
So far, long supply chain legacy processes, multi-channel retail and low depth and size complexity has posed a hurdle for retailers in India. “Fashion retail has poor (working capital) rotation in India. It does about 2 turns compared to global inventory brands like Zara, which do about 10 to 12,” states Jain. In the long run, lower inventory turn leads to significant revenue and margin losses.
Having worked at Yebhi.com and later, as the Head of Supply Chain at Myntra, Jain understood the importance of technology to solve problems in the e-commerce space and the tools required to bring in efficiency for traditional players. This thinking led Rajul Jain along with co-founders, Anshuman Agarwal and Romil Jain, to set up Increff with a focus on bringing technology and data-driven decision making in operations for retail and fashion brands.
Earlier brands and retailers were sceptical about adopting technology but we’ve seen a cultural shift with a lot of retailers understanding the crucial role of technology to remain ahead in a very competitive environment.
Powering growth
Currently, Increff works with 17 clients such as Puma, WROGN, Reliance AJIO, Myntra, Mango, Esprit, among others; for whom they manage close to 30 brands. “Overall, the brands see a revenue improvement of 25 per cent to 30 percent and a margin improvement by 4 to 5 percentage points with Increff,” explained Jain. One of their existing clients recently saw a 2-fold to 3-fold jump in revenue from the same inventory holding. “The most important growth driver for us has been focusing on the quality of our products and services and the significant impact it can make on a client’s revenues and margins,” added Jain.
“Our products bring intelligence, accuracy and speed in decision making and operations,” says the co-founder. He admits that earlier brands and retailers were sceptical about adopting technology. But, since then, the team has seen a cultural shift with many retailers understanding the crucial role of technology to remain ahead in a very competitive environment. The current digital on-demand trend has made supply chain important to not just customer experiences but also to organisational profitability. “We have processes and organizational structures in place which delivers B2C type of a customer service to B2B customers,” he added.
Increff is currently building the next versions of its IRIS and ASSURE platforms and will be launching a pure SaaS version of the IRIS platform which will automate elements on the supply side of things for customers and, eventually, revolutionize the way merchandisers and planners work today. Right from adding value by enabling granular data driven decision making to providing nuanced store level analytics, IRIS has the ability to add value to the complex category of retail and fashion.
Key forces reshaping supply chain
With a well-established base and a proven product-market fit, the company is on an aggressive growth path in the Indian and overseas market. It recently raised a funding of US $ 3 million in 2019 from Flipkart’s co-founder, Binny Bansal and Sailesh Tulshan of the venture capital company 021 Capital. These funds will be used to fuel the next phase of growth by foraying into international markets, expanding its customer pipeline in India and enhancing its current product offerings.
Increff is in the process of forging new partnerships with various organizations to enhance business development internationally and enable aggressive growth. “We are at a commercial discussion stage with one very large client in the Middle East and PoC (Proof of Concept) stage with one of the largest supply chain companies of Europe,” explained Jain.
“We focus on innovation, building impactful technological solutions and problem statements rather than target revenues. If we constantly innovate and solve big problems by building cutting edge technology, we surely will beat even what we dream,” concluded Jain.
Snapshot
Company name: INCREFF (registered name: NextSCM Solutions Private Ltd)
Founding team: Rajul Jain, Romil Jain and Anshuman Agarwal
Founded in the year: August 2016
City: Bengaluru
Funding details: Raised seed fund of US $ 2 million in December 2016 from Sequoia Capital and clutch of angel investors. Series A funding of US $ 3 million in 2019 from Binny Bansal and Sailesh Tulshan of 021 Capital
Company profile: INCREFF was founded in 2016 by Rajul Jain, Romil Jain and Anshuman Agarwal, who bring a collective experience of over 50 years across technology, fashion, retail, e-commerce and supply chain. INCREFF is technology & analytics enterprise helping Fashion & Lifestyle brands improve inventory turns through smart merchandising and efficient fulfilment via single view of inventory. INCREFF delivers INCREDIBLE EFFICIENCY in sales and inventory via its two Enterprise SaaS solutions (IRIS and ASSURE) and warehousing as a service (WaaS). INCREFF today has a team of 60 (all from premier institutes) and plans to add 40 more this calendar year. Today, with a solid foundation build by having clients like Puma, WROGN, Reliance AJIO, Myntra, Mango, ESPRIT, Arvind Group (Ruf n Tuf and Newport) amongst others, INCREFF aims to become the most impactful technology solutions company in the world and is accelerating towards next phase of growth by expanding its customer pipeline and foraying into international markets.
