Female Indian entrepreneurial startup is an Investor magnet

folarin okunola

May 28, 2015 10:05 AM

Drawing a line as to what the Indian reader finds acceptable was a challenge and these strong women triumphed over that obstacle to build something truly amazing.

POPxo Cofounders Priyanka Gill and Namrata Bostrom.

These two women initially started out as a luxury website meant for high-flying internationally resident Indians but chance turned this Indian women-owned online magazine – catering to both English and Hindi speakers – into the latest magnet of startup investment seekers.

“We wanted to build a funded business, and wanted it to be quick,” says startup magazine POPxo Founder and Editor-In-Chief Priyanka Gill, who started out in the online business segment as the creator of luxury magazine ‘eStylista’, based out of the U.K.

However, a lack of obvious growth and branding issues with eStylista caused the passionate fashion and technology aficionado to rethink and redesign what she wanted to offer an audience, and falling into the category that caters to the younger segment was a “lucky happenstance” she says.

Now based out of New Delhi, POPxo, which lists former Elle India Editor-In-Chief Nonita Kalra and Hello! Pakistan CEO Zahra Saifullah among the illustrious women on its ‘Style Council’, has created a niche in the otherwise nonexistent market of Indian online sites offering young women quality reading material on sex and lifestyle issues.

Usually, these are simple topics that were never addressed in school or typically conservative Indian homes.

“We stumbled upon the content,” POPxo cofounder and CEO Namrata Bostrom, a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, who worked at management consultancy BCG before completing an MBA at the London Business School says.

“We started with something we thought people wanted to read, but not everything worked,” says Bostrom, “We discovered articles discussing high-end fashion did work, then we discovered that beauty is always a bigger win than fashion, then found lifestyle, relationships, and stories related to feminine hygiene and sexual health all worked really well.”

Drawing a line as to what the Indian reader finds acceptable was the next challenge and these strong women triumphed over that obstacle to build something truly amazing.

A group of angel investors including Google India head Rajan Anandan and India’s largest online jeweler CaratLane’s Mithun Sancheti have also put their money into the company's ambition.

folarin okunola