With fashion segment players exploring omni-channel presence for post-COVID sales and consumers opting for online purchases, fashion retail management start-up 6Degree recently added online stores to its offering. The company also recently raised a fresh funding of Rs 2.5 crore from global early-stage investor network Keiretsu Forum. Apart from its fashion network - a B2B platform that connects various stake holders in the fashion industry - a few months ago 6Degree also launched a fashion retail management suite for designers.

"The retail management suite for emerging fashion designers and brands and the affordable luxury segment is a pretty strong play now. We have seen our annual revenue runrate already inch towards Rs 25 crores with retail management system," said Nikhil Hegde, Co-Founder & CEO of 6Degree.

With COVID-19 coming into play, Nikhil said that the company saw the need to ramp up its business model. It took around 6-7 months of work to build the entire fashion retail management ecosystem which complimented the existing fashion talent business of the company.

"With the retail management suite, designers can scale business in all geographies, and at the same time help multi-brand and single brand stores also scale up business and discover new designers" Nikhil added.

Working with not just new designers but also with bigger names such as Gaurang Shah, Ritu Kumar and Anju Modi, 80 per cent of 6Degrees's sales come from India while 20 per cent from outside the country. In the Indian affordable luxury market the price points that  drive sales range from anywhere between Rs 5,000-15000, while internationally the orders start from the price point of Rs 30,000 and go up to Rs 2 lakh per order.

Nikhil points out that though sub Rs 1,500 range fashion shopping has taken a hit, affordable luxury has stayed insulated. "We have seen a sudden jump of 4 times in this segment" he said, indicating their customers not going through tough economic times during this pandemic and also shopping induced as an alternate means to gratification with social outing and gathering being minimal.

Started in 2015 by Nikhil Hegde and Amit Bhardwaj, 6Degree had raised an undisclosed amount from SucSeed Ventures as part of its Pre-Series A round earlier in the year. The company currently has over 15,000 professionals on its B2B platform and 250 designers and brands in its e-store.