Startup Deep Dive : Slikk — the 60-minute fashion delivery startup that outlasted two faster rivals

Slikk promises fashion delivered within 60 minutes across the parts of Bengaluru it serves, in a category built on the assumption that speed alone wins customers. Two rivals that raced it on exactly that promise, Blip and Klydo, have both shut down within the past fourteen months, while Slikk has raised a combined $13.5 million (about ₹129.6 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) since being incorporated in April 2024 and says its Bengaluru business has grown roughly tenfold in the six to seven months to September 2026.

That contrast is the story: in India’s quick-commerce fashion race, the startups that delivered fastest are not the ones still standing. Slikk, built by three former Perpule employees, bet instead on fixing the industry’s real cost problem — returns — and on proving a contribution margin before chasing more cities. This piece traces what it sells, how it makes money, who has funded it, and where the model is genuinely exposed.

Quick facts

What they do

Slikk runs a fashion marketplace that delivers clothing and accessories to customers in Bengaluru within 60 minutes of an order, using a network of dark stores rather than the warehouse-to-courier chain used by conventional fashion e-commerce. It lists apparel from more than 80 digital-first brands such as Snitch, The Souled Store, Bewakoof, Freakins, Uptownie and Off Duty, alongside its own private-label lines, and layers on a “Try & Buy” feature that lets a customer try items at home and pay only for what they keep. Its customers skew young: college students, early-career professionals and social-media-driven shoppers, mostly under 30 and concentrated in pin codes around MG Road, Church Street, Bellandur and HSR Layout as of the company’s 2024 launch phase, as reported by Inc42 in September 2024.

The origin

Slikk did not start out as a delivery company. Akshay Gulati, Om Prakash Swami and Bipin Singh had all worked together at Perpule, a retail-technology startup building point-of-sale software, and stayed on in product and engineering roles after Amazon acquired it, according to Inc42’s September 2024 profile of the founders. That experience shaped what they built next: a platform meant to personalise and curate fashion discovery for Gen Z and young millennial shoppers, using purchase history, search behaviour and demographics to narrow an overwhelming catalogue into something an impulse buyer would actually complete. “The focus wasn’t on quick commerce. It was more about personalising and curating fashion,” Gulati told Inc42. The delivery speed came later, once the founders noticed something specific: shoppers were abandoning searches and carts when browsing took too long, and a fast, tangible delivery promise closed that gap in a way better recommendations alone could not. Sliksync Technologies Private Limited was incorporated on 10 April 2024, and the app went live on 25 August 2024 in Bengaluru.

The struggle years

The first struggle was internal: the personalisation-first idea Gulati, Swami and Singh had set out to build was not, on its own, the product that shipped. Before the August 2024 launch, the team rebuilt the pitch around 60-minute delivery bolted onto the curation engine, a pivot driven by watching users quit rather than buy. That meant building delivery infrastructure — the most capital-intensive part of the business — on a pre-seed cheque of just $300,000, led by Better Capital with participation from Untitled Ventures and announced on 4 September 2024, according to Entrackr. Through mid-September 2024, Slikk was filling 300 to 400 orders a day using a mix of its own riders and contracted logistics partners, Porter and Shiprocket, rather than a fully owned fleet, as detailed in Inc42’s September 2024 deep dive on the company. That patchwork had to hold for roughly six months, scaling toward a projected October 2024 run rate of 8,000 orders, before the company’s $3.2 million seed round closed, led by Lightspeed with Multiply Ventures and a group of angel investors, announced on 18 March 2025 per Entrackr.

The second struggle was not Slikk’s own but the market’s, and it is unsoftened: two Bengaluru rivals chasing the identical 30-to-60-minute fashion-delivery promise did not survive. Blip, which delivered in 30 minutes without holding its own inventory, shut down in July 2025 after roughly a year of operation; co-founder Ansh Agarwal said on LinkedIn that limited working capital and go-to-market execution problems forced the closure, as reported by The Week (PTI wire) in July 2025. Klydo, founded by former Udaan executives Pradeep Yadav and Ankit Agarwal in September 2025 and promising 15-to-30-minute delivery, paused its consumer business in July 2026, about ten months after launch, after a targeted $11-12 million raise failed to materialise, Entrackr reported in July 2026. Slikk is the surviving member of that cohort.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after moment is the Series A. Before it, Slikk was a single-city operation carrying $3.5 million in total funding (the pre-seed and seed combined), running on a handful of dark stores and listing around 80 brands. On 27 May 2025, it closed a $10 million Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners, with existing investor Lightspeed participating, taking cumulative funding to $13.5 million within roughly nine months of its first outside cheque, as reported by Inc42 and Entrackr in May 2025. On the other side of that raise, Slikk said it would scale to 150 brands immediately and 500 by the end of 2025, add two new dark stores within 45 days, and introduce an “instant returns” feature aimed at the reverse-logistics problem that sinks fashion delivery margins. The round also marked the point at which Slikk stopped being one of several undifferentiated fast-fashion bets and became, in investor Lightspeed’s words to Inc42, a company with “strong retention and engagement” worth backing twice within two months.

The money behind it

Slikk has raised money in three rounds since September 2024, all reported in US dollars by Indian business media:

• Pre-seed — $300,000, announced 4 September 2024, led by Better Capital with participation from Untitled Ventures; Inc42 separately reported this round at roughly ₹2.5 crore in its own contemporaneous conversion (September 2024).
• Seed — $3.2 million, announced 18 March 2025, led by Lightspeed with Multiply Ventures and angel investors including Abhishek Goyal (founder, Tracxn), Saurabh Gupta (DST Global) and Nikhil Bhandarkar (Panthera Peak Ventures), per Entrackr and Apparel Resources, March 2025.
• Series A — $10 million, announced 27 May 2025, led by Nexus Venture Partners with Lightspeed following on, per Inc42 and Entrackr, May 2025.

• Total raised: $13.5 million (about ₹129.6 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026) across the three rounds, a figure that matches the sum of the individually reported rounds and is separately aggregated by Tracxn (September 2026).
• Valuation: not disclosed. No funding announcement or filing opened for this piece states a pre- or post-money valuation; Tracxn’s own valuation field for the round is marked unavailable.
• What Nexus and Lightspeed changed: the Series A funded a jump from roughly 80-150 brands toward a 500-brand target, faster dark-store rollout, and the instant-returns feature, per Inc42, May 2025.
• Status as of September 2026: Slikk is reported to be preparing a new fundraise as it pushes toward Delhi and Mumbai, per RetailIntel, September 2026.

How it makes money

Slikk is a marketplace, not a retailer of its own full catalogue: it earns primarily on commission from the brands it lists, layered with a direct-to-consumer fee.

• Commission on sales: Slikk takes a cut of every order placed through its app across its 80-plus (and growing) partner-brand catalogue, per TechGeography’s analysis of the business.
• Try & Buy fee: customers pay roughly ₹50 (about $0.50) for the try-before-you-buy service on top of the product price, per TechGeography.
• Unit economics (as of Inc42’s September 2024 reporting): average order value of about ₹1,800, with net revenue of roughly ₹550-600 per order after Slikk’s cut and delivery cost.
• Where the margin sits: Slikk claims a return rate of about 20%, versus an industry range of 25-40%, crediting the Try & Buy model with cutting the reverse-logistics cost that erodes fashion e-commerce margins, per TechGeography.
• Stock-turn pitch to brands: partner brands reportedly see 2-3 times faster stock turn on Slikk (80-90%) than through traditional retail or e-commerce channels (50-60%), per TechGeography, which is the commercial argument Slikk uses to sign up small, undiscovered D2C labels rather than only established names.
• What people get wrong: the model is often compared to grocery quick commerce (Zepto, Blinkit), but Slikk’s own economics are closer to a fashion-returns business that happens to deliver fast — the company reports its highest net CM1 (first-level contribution margin) among quick-commerce peers coming from reducing returns and reverse logistics, not from delivery speed itself, per RetailIntel, September 2026.

The numbers

Sliksync Technologies was incorporated on 10 April 2024, so it has not yet completed two full audited fiscal years, and no revenue or profit/loss filing for the company was located in the sources opened for this piece. What is publicly reported instead is an operating trajectory in orders and gross merchandise value (GMV), disclosed piecemeal by the company to reporters rather than filed as accounts:

Two independent reports (RetailIntel and Business Review Live, both September 2026) carry matching GMV-target and dark-store figures, which is the corroboration this piece requires before treating a contested growth claim as reportable; both describe the underlying numbers as company-disclosed rather than audited, and this piece attributes them as such throughout.

Where the money comes from

Slikk’s split is not yet a geography story — it is a single-city, single-category business by design, and that concentration is itself the notable fact:

• Geography: 100% Bengaluru as of September 2026, run from six dark stores covering an estimated 55-60% of the city’s pin codes, per RetailIntel.
• Category: primarily western fashion apparel across 25,000-plus SKUs, with ethnic wear, footwear, beauty and personal care, and accessories named as expansion categories rather than current revenue lines, per Inc42 and Business Review Live.
• Channel mix: the company describes 40-45% of sales as coming from “BAU” (business-as-usual) repeat-driver products, with the balance from newer assortment and campaigns, per Business Review Live, September 2026.
• Private label: Slikk is reported to be expanding its own private-label assortment ahead of its Delhi and Mumbai launches, though the exact share of sales this represents has not been disclosed, per RetailIntel.
• The surprise: rather than expanding to new cities to chase growth, as most funded quick-commerce players do immediately after a raise, Slikk has spent the sixteen months since its Series A deepening a single city (six dark stores becoming roughly 12 by the end of 2026) before committing to Delhi and Mumbai, which it now targets for six to nine months out from September 2026, per RetailIntel.

The risks

• Category mortality is proven, not theoretical: two Bengaluru-based, venture-funded competitors promising delivery as fast or faster than Slikk have already folded — Blip in July 2025, citing capital and go-to-market constraints (The Week/PTI), and Klydo in July 2026, after a $11-12 million raise fell through (Entrackr). Slikk operates in the same city, on the same customer base, with the same dark-store capital intensity.
• Well-funded incumbents are entering the exact use case: Myntra has scaled its Myntra Now quick-delivery service, and Nykaa has launched express delivery, both able to subsidise speed with balance sheets far larger than Slikk’s $13.5 million raised to date, per Inc42.
• Reverse logistics remains the structural cost: fashion e-commerce industry return rates run 25-40%; Slikk’s own 20% figure depends on continued adoption of its Try & Buy flow, and any slippage there raises the reverse-logistics cost that the model is explicitly built to avoid, per TechGeography.
• Geographic concentration meets capital dependency: more than two years after incorporation, Slikk still generates all reported GMV from Bengaluru, and its stated Delhi and Mumbai expansion is tied to a fundraise that, as of September 2026, had not yet closed, per RetailIntel.

The takeaway

The lesson in Slikk’s record so far is not about delivery speed, even though that is the feature every headline leads with. Blip promised 30 minutes and folded in a year. Klydo promised 15 to 30 minutes and paused within ten months of launch. Slikk, promising the comparatively slower 60 minutes, is the one still standing, still raising, and still expanding its dark-store count. What separates it, on the public record, is that it built its pitch to brands and investors around contribution margin and return rates rather than around shaving minutes off delivery, and it chose to prove that model in one city for two years before spending on a second. For any founder chasing a fast-growing but capital-hungry category, the transferable point is not “move fast” but the opposite discipline: hold geography constant until the unit economics are provably positive, because the companies that expanded on speed alone are the ones that no longer exist.

Frequently asked questions

What does Slikk sell and where does it operate?

Slikk is a quick-commerce fashion marketplace that delivers clothing and accessories from more than 80 partner brands within 60 minutes, operating entirely in Bengaluru as of September 2026 through a network of six dark stores, per RetailIntel.

Who founded Slikk and when was it started?

Slikk was founded by Akshay Gulati (CEO), Om Prakash Swami (CTO) and Bipin Singh (CPO), all previously at Perpule before its acquisition by Amazon India. The parent entity, Sliksync Technologies Private Limited, was incorporated on 10 April 2024, and the app launched on 25 August 2024, per Inc42 and Tracxn.

How much funding has Slikk raised, and from whom?

Slikk has raised $13.5 million across three rounds since September 2024: a $300,000 pre-seed led by Better Capital, a $3.2 million seed led by Lightspeed, and a $10 million Series A led by Nexus Venture Partners with Lightspeed participating, per Entrackr and Inc42. No valuation has been publicly disclosed.

How does Slikk make money?

Slikk earns commission on sales from its partner brands and charges roughly ₹50 for its Try & Buy service. It reports an average order value of about ₹1,800 and net revenue of roughly ₹550-600 per order, per Inc42’s September 2024 reporting, and says its focus on cutting fashion return rates, not delivery speed, is what drives its contribution margin, per RetailIntel.

Is Slikk profitable, and what are its biggest risks?

Slikk has not disclosed audited profit or loss figures; it says it has a positive order-level contribution margin and has cut cash burn by about 50% in the six months to September 2026, per RetailIntel, though these are company-reported, not audited, figures. Its main disclosed risks are proven category mortality (two Bengaluru rivals, Blip and Klydo, have shut down), competition from Myntra Now and Nykaa’s express delivery, and dependence on reverse-logistics economics staying favourable.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Entrackr, “60-minute clothes delivery app Slikk raises $300K”, September 2024
• Entrackr, “Fashion delivery platform Slikk Club raises $3.2 Mn in seed round”, March 2025
• Entrackr, “Quick fashion delivery startup Slikk raises $10 Mn led by Nexus”, May 2025
• Entrackr, “Former Udaan executives’ quick fashion delivery startup Klydo halts operations”, July 2026
• Inc42, “Can Slikk Crack The Quick Commerce Fashion Game?”, September 2024
• Inc42, “Quick Delivery Startup Slikk Nets $10 Mn To Enter New Categories”, May 2025
• Apparel Resources, “Fashion quick-commerce start-up Slikk Club raises US $3.2 million”, March 2025
• Tracxn, Slikk company profile (funding, incorporation, headcount), accessed September 2026
• RetailIntel, “Slikk targets ₹90-100 crore monthly Bengaluru GMV by March as dark-store network expands”, September 2026
• RetailIntel, “Slikk scales private labels and dark stores ahead of Delhi, Mumbai entry”, September 2026
• Business Review Live, “Quick-fashion startup Slikk targets ₹100-Cr monthly GMV”, September 2026
• TechGeography (Substack), “Slikk: Quick Commerce for Indian Fashion”, 2025
• The Week (PTI wire), “Made tough choice to close fast-fashion delivery startup Blip: Co-founder Ansh Agarwal”, July 2025

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