National, January 30, 2025: shoppin’, a new-age fashion search engine powered by AI, has successfully raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from Info Edge Ventures. The platform is on a mission to make fashion discovery seamless, personalized, and accessible for all, enabling users to discover apparel products using prompts, vibes, product descriptions and images, putting consumer need at the heart of its operations.
In an era where online shopping can feel overwhelming and 80% consumers find poor fashion search as a barrier to purchase, shoppin’ stands out by simplifying the process of helping users find their perfect style. The platform has already built an impressive base of over 35,000 Instagram followers and 20,000+ waitlist sign-ups, all in 3 weeks —achieved at 0 marketing spend—highlighting the need for the problem they’re solving and shoppin’s growing popularity among fashion enthusiasts.
The newly acquired funding will be allocated towards three key areas: hiring top talent, enhancing proprietary technology, and fostering growth. A large majority of the funds will be deployed towards building a team of AI engineers, developing, fine-tuning and scaling its advanced AI models, incl. their custom built SLMs and embeddings model, tailored specifically for fashion.
“If OpenAI’s multi-modal and NLP search prowess, Google’s indexing algorithm, and Pinterest’s social DNA were to have a fashion-obsessed baby, it’d be us,” said Shlok Bhartiya, Founder & CEO of shoppin’.
“For Gen-Zs, over 75% of fashion inspiration discovery happens on Instagram and Pinterest. We started shoppin’ seven months ago with the idea of bridging the gap between inspiration discovery on social platforms and e-commerce discovery on marketplaces and D2C brand websites. Our mission at shoppin’ is to make fashion discovery as seamless and easy as clicking an image. With Info Edge Ventures’ support, we’re committed to innovating further, pushing the boundaries of AI, to help every shopper find what they love effortlessly,” said Shlok.
“Our foundational AI models for fashion and autonomous agents for commerce have enabled us to revolutionize fashion search,” added Utsav Soi, Co-founder & CTO of shoppin’.
“Fashion discovery needs to be much more intuitive and enjoyable. With the emergence of many new fashion D2C brands in the country in the last five years, we strongly believe that surfacing upcoming and innovative D2C brands to the right customers and solving brands’ distribution challenges is essential,” said Kitty Agarwal, Partner at Info Edge Ventures. “The founders are young and mission-driven—I’m yet to see any consumer product get the kind of social and word-of-mouth-driven organic waitlist shoppin’ has been able to garner in the run-up to the launch. We are very excited,” added Kitty
shoppin’ is laying the groundwork to become a shoppable Pinterest by integrating cutting-edge AI with a user-friendly experience. With a team of 20 Gen-Z engineers and marketers, shoppin’ is well positioned to launch its beta search engine in February, with subsequent versions enhancing accuracy and personalization.
With partnerships already established with many leading D2C brands, Shoppin’ strives to be a trusted partner for both brands and consumers. Looking ahead, Shoppin’ plans to collaborate with even more brands, increasing its offering to Gen-Zs, further solidifying its position as the premier fashion platform for consumers and brands alike.
