Smytten, a product sampling and engagement platform for direct-to-consumer brands, has raised around $15 million in its latest funding round led by its existing investors Fireside Ventures and Roots Ventures.
The round also saw investment from Marico chairman Harsh Mariwala’s family office Sharrp Ventures, Einfochips founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Pratul Shroff family office–Waao Partners, Rockman Industries chairman Suman Kant Munjal family office’s Survam Partners and Sattva Group family office.
Smytten plans to utilize the funds to hire engineering talent and enhance its tech infrastructure with the help of AI & ML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) for brand building and customer acquisition.
Founded in 2015 by ex-Googler Swagat Sarangi and ex-Unilever executive, Siddhartha Nangia, the online platform for product trials has consumer brand products from different categories like fragrances, and beauty & makeup, male grooming, food & beverages, and others.
It offers product samples to consumers across these categories and asks for real-time feedback from users post sampling.
The startup has three streams of revenue, business-to-consumer product sample sales segment, brand commission on the sale of products and earns revenue through data sharing to brands based on product samples and consumer feedback analysis.
It clocks around 40% from the B2C (business-to-consumer) sampling segment, 20-25% from the brand commission segment, and the rest from the sampling analysis and data sharing segment.
Smytten presently has around 920 brands on its platform and aims to launch another 700 brands in the next 12 months.
It is also in discussion with about 12 international brands and will be launching the same in India in the coming months.
In August 2021, Smytten had raised $6 million in a Series A funding round led by Fireside Ventures. It raised $1.5 million in its pre-Series A round from Roots Ventures.
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