Startup Deep Dive : FabAlley — a Rs 45 crore loss held flat, and an FY24 turnaround the filings do not yet confirm

In FY23 the parent of FabAlley and Indya booked Rs 185 crore (about $19 million) in revenue from operations and a Rs 45 crore net loss — the exact same loss it had posted a year earlier on Rs 28 crore less in sales. A year after that, the company told investors it had turned EBITDA-positive and grown more than 30%. An independent database puts its FY24 revenue below the FY23 figure. Both claims sit in the public record.

High Street Essentials, the Delhi-NCR company behind India’s best-known homegrown women’s fashion labels, is a study in the gap between what a bootstrapped D2C brand reports to the press and what it files with the registrar. It built two brands from a 100-square-foot office, survived a lockdown that briefly took its revenue to zero, and reached the wedding-wear market a decade after it started selling crop tops online. This piece keeps the founder-stated numbers and the filed numbers side by side, names the source for each, and cuts anything that could not be verified this month.

Quick facts

What FabAlley and Indya do

High Street Essentials is an omnichannel women’s fashion business that sells its own designs, both online and through physical stores, to Indian women shoppers. It runs two distinct brands, and their split matters to the whole story.

• FabAlley: the founding brand, launched 2012, selling women’s Western wear, workwear and loungewear online and through marketplaces (company and Forbes India, 2024).
• Indya: launched around 2016-17 as an ethnic-fusion label, blending Indian fabrics with Western silhouettes at Rs 2,000-3,000 price points; it grew to roughly 65% of the business, per founder Shivani Poddar (Forbes India, 2024).
• Weddings By Indya: a premium occasion-wear line launched in 2022 at roughly Rs 5,000-25,000, which reached about 10-12% of the business within a year (Forbes India, 2024).
• Channels: direct websites, third-party marketplaces, shop-in-shops inside large-format stores, and exclusive brand outlets (EBOs). The company reported 12 EBOs across New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Bhubaneswar, Indore and Ahmedabad as of May 2024 (Inc42, 2024).

The origin: an M&A analyst and a Titan marketer

The two founders were childhood friends who came to fashion from outside it. Shivani Poddar, a finance graduate, worked in mergers and acquisitions at Avendus Capital in Mumbai; Tanvi Malik was a marketer at Titan. They debated a women’s fashion e-commerce idea for roughly six months before launching in 2012, according to Poddar’s account in Forbes India. The founding insight was a demographic one rather than a design one. Poddar observed that India was, in her words, the one large country where women’s fashion was smaller than men’s, and reasoned that rising female workforce participation and disposable income would close that gap — and that online retail, small in India at the time, would be the channel that captured it.

They started with little. Poddar has described a 100-square-foot office and roughly $100,000 of personal savings, followed by two years of bootstrapping before the first outside cheque of about $500,000 (Forbes India, 2024). FabAlley began as a fast-fashion Western-wear play for young Indian women, competing for the same shopper that Myntra and international brands were beginning to court. By FY17 the brand was doing around Rs 30-35 crore in revenue, the point at which the story stops being a pure e-commerce bet and becomes something harder.

The struggle years

Western wear alone was never going to be a large enough market in India, and the founders discovered it the hard way. Diwali, the peak of the Indian shopping calendar, exposed the problem: a brand built on dresses and jumpsuits had little to sell in the country’s biggest festive-buying window, when spending shifts to ethnic and occasion wear. Sales dipped when they should have surged. That seasonal hole in the catalogue, more than any single funding crunch, was the recurring near-death of the early years — a Western-wear brand structurally locked out of the moments when Indian women spend most on clothes.

Then came the harder shock. When COVID-19 lockdowns hit in 2020, an apparel business built on discretionary spending and physical trials saw demand collapse; Poddar has said revenue effectively went to zero during the worst of it (Forbes India, 2024). The registrar filings show how deep the dent ran: revenue that had reached Rs 127.66 crore in FY20 came with a swing to a net loss of Rs 4.23 crore and negative EBITDA of Rs 1.83 crore, against a small Rs 1.29 crore net profit and positive Rs 3.48 crore EBITDA in FY19 (Inc42, citing filings, 2020). The company kept its roughly 1,100 employees on the payroll without layoffs, repurposing fabric into masks and loungewear to keep cash moving, and raised emergency capital at a punishing discount — a round in mid-2020 that valued the company at about half its pre-COVID mark. Surviving 2020 intact, rather than any single product win, is what carried the business into its next phase.

The turning point: a Diwali gamble called Indya

The event that changed the trajectory was not a funding round; it was a product bet made to plug the festive hole. Facing another weak Diwali, the founders designed roughly 40 combinations of crop tops paired with skirts and Indian fabrics — Western silhouettes cut for an Indian occasion — and, by Poddar’s account, the collection sold out in about 15 days (Forbes India, 2024). That response convinced them to spin the idea into a standalone brand, Indya, rather than a sub-line of FabAlley.

The numbers on either side of that decision tell the story. FabAlley was a roughly Rs 30-35 crore Western-wear brand at the point Indya launched; within a few years Indya had grown to around 65% of the whole company’s business, per Poddar (Forbes India, 2024), and the group’s revenue from operations climbed from Rs 127.66 crore in FY20 to Rs 157 crore in FY22 and Rs 185 crore in FY23 (filings via Inc42 and Entrackr). Indya also gave the company a reason to move offline — ethnic and occasion wear is bought after touch and trial far more than Western basics are — which is what pushed High Street Essentials from a pure e-commerce label into shop-in-shops and, later, exclusive brand outlets. The pivot from Western wear to Indian occasion wear turned a seasonal weakness into the company’s largest brand.

The money behind it

High Street Essentials raised across roughly a decade in a mix of equity and debt, staying comparatively lean for a company running two brands and a physical-store network.

• Seed/Series A, October 2016: about $2 million led by India Quotient, with the Indian Angel Network and angel Ranjan Sharma participating; the brand was around Rs 35 crore in revenue at the time (IndianWeb2 and Forbes India).
• Series B, December 2018: Rs 60 crore (about $8.54 million) from SAIF Partners, the fund later renamed Elevation Capital (YourStory and Inc42, 2018).
• COVID round, June 2020: Rs 20.6-20.75 crore from SAIF Partners, India Quotient Opportunities Fund, Abhishek Dalmia, Star Global Resources and others, struck at roughly Rs 1,401 per share — an enterprise value of about Rs 197 crore, down roughly 52% from the Rs 2,925 per share (about Rs 514 crore) mark of October 2019 (Inc42, citing filings, 2020).
• Debt, May 2022: Rs 40 crore from Stride Ventures (Entrackr, 2024).
• Latest round, 27 May 2024: Rs 50 crore ($6 million) in equity and debt led by Sangita Jindal, chairperson of the JSW Foundation, with family offices of the SRF Group, Cyient’s Krishna Bodanapu and Pure Home + Living’s Timmy Sarna participating; earmarked for the Weddings By Indya expansion (Inc42 and Entrackr, 2024).

On totals and valuation, the sources diverge and are labelled as such. Entrackr reported the company had raised about Rs 180 crore before the May 2024 round and that the round valued it at about Rs 700 crore (about $73 million at Rs 96/$); Inc42, covering the same round, put total raising at “over $18 million” and did not disclose a valuation. The Rs 700 crore figure is therefore reported rather than independently confirmed, and is treated that way throughout this piece.

How it makes money

The business is a designer-and-retailer model — High Street Essentials owns the brands and the designs and captures the retail margin — with the revenue booked in two distinct ways in its filings.

• Apparel sales: the core line item, Rs 142 crore in FY23, or about 77% of operating revenue, up 12.7% year on year — garments sold under FabAlley and Indya through own sites and stores (MCA filing via Entrackr, 2024).
• Agency commission: Rs 43 crore in FY23, up 38.7% year on year — the faster-growing stream, reflecting marketplace and channel arrangements booked as commission rather than gross sales (MCA via Entrackr, 2024).
• Cost of procurement: Rs 63 crore in FY23, about 27% of total expenditure, up 6.8% — the raw-material and inventory base that a design-led apparel maker carries (MCA via Entrackr, 2024).
• Where the margin leaks: advertising and selling costs, which rose 30.8% in FY23, and the fixed cost of running EBOs and shop-in-shops — the reason total expenses of Rs 235 crore outran Rs 185 crore of revenue (MCA via Entrackr, 2024).

The part observers get wrong is that occasion and wedding wear, not the Western-wear brand that carries the company’s name, is where the pricing power sits: Weddings By Indya’s Rs 5,000-25,000 tickets carry a very different margin from FabAlley’s fast-fashion basics.

The numbers

The cleanest audited series comes from registrar filings reported by Inc42 and Entrackr; FY24 and FY25 are only available as company statements or database estimates, and are flagged as such. Unit: Rs crore.

Two things stand out, and one of them is a genuine contradiction. First, losses were sticky at the top of the growth curve: the company held its net loss flat at Rs 45 crore across FY22 and FY23 even as revenue rose 17.8%, and its FY23 EBITDA margin, at about -14.2%, improved only modestly from about -17% the year before (Entrackr, 2024). Second, FY24 cannot be stated as fact: in May 2024 the company told the press it had turned EBITDA-positive and grown more than 30% (Inc42 and Entrackr), which would imply revenue well above the FY23 Rs 185 crore, yet Tracxn’s database lists FY24 revenue at about Rs 164 crore — below FY23. Those cannot both be right, and no audited FY24 profit-and-loss statement is public to settle it, so both are shown and neither is presented as confirmed.

Where the money comes from

The revenue mix has shifted well away from the brand the company is named after.

• By brand: Indya, the ethnic-fusion label launched years after FabAlley, grew to roughly 65% of the business, per founder Shivani Poddar — the Western-wear founding brand is now the minority (Forbes India, 2024).
• By line item: apparel sales of Rs 142 crore (about 77%) versus agency commission of Rs 43 crore in FY23, with the commission stream growing faster (38.7% versus 12.7%) (MCA via Entrackr, 2024).
• By product tier: Weddings By Indya, launched in 2022, reached about 10-12% of the business within a year at Rs 5,000-25,000 price points — the deliberate move up-market (Forbes India, 2024).
• By channel: an omnichannel spread of own websites, marketplaces, shop-in-shops and 12 EBOs across six cities as of May 2024, versus roughly 500 points of sale reached by 2019 (Forbes India and Inc42).

The surprise in the split: the fastest-growing reported revenue stream is agency commission, not the apparel sales the brand is built on — a sign of how much the business now runs through channels it does not fully own.

The risks

These are concrete, mechanism-level risks grounded in the company’s own filings and the category it operates in.

• Persistent losses against a lean cash pile: the company carried a Rs 45 crore net loss in both FY22 and FY23 on total expenses of Rs 235 crore in FY23, while having raised only about Rs 180 crore in total (Entrackr, 2024). A design-and-store business that keeps losing at that rate has limited runway without fresh capital.
• Rising selling costs eating growth: advertising and selling costs rose 30.8% in FY23, faster than the 17.8% revenue growth — a customer-acquisition treadmill common to D2C fashion, where each rupee of new revenue can cost more than the last (MCA via Entrackr, 2024).
• Offline expansion risk: the wedding-wear pivot depends on opening physical stores, which carry fixed rent and staffing whether or not footfall arrives; the Rs 50 crore raised in May 2024 was tied specifically to that store rollout (Inc42, 2024).
• Intense competition: FabAlley and Indya compete against marketplace private labels, Reliance and Aditya Birla fashion houses, and a crowded field of D2C ethnic and Western brands, keeping pricing power and margins under constant pressure.

The takeaway

The transferable lesson from High Street Essentials is that a founder’s biggest opportunity can be hiding inside a recurring weakness. FabAlley’s structural flaw was that it had nothing to sell during Diwali, the very peak of Indian clothes-buying; rather than paper over that gap with discounts, the founders built an entire second brand to fill it, and Indya went on to become the larger half of the company. The discipline worth copying is narrower still: know which of your numbers are audited and which are your own press release. High Street Essentials has both a filed Rs 45 crore loss and a stated turn to EBITDA profitability in the public record, and the honest way to read the company is to hold the two apart until an audited FY24 statement reconciles them. For any operator raising on momentum, the reminder is that the registrar remembers what the press cycle forgets.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns FabAlley and Indya?

Both are brands of High Street Essentials Private Limited, a privately held company founded in 2012 by Shivani Poddar and Tanvi Malik. It remains venture- and debt-funded and is not listed on any exchange (Forbes India and company statements, 2024).

How much revenue does High Street Essentials make?

Its last clearly filed figure is Rs 185 crore in revenue from operations for FY23, up 17.8% from Rs 157 crore in FY22 (MCA filing via Entrackr, 2024). FY24 is contested: the company claimed 30%-plus growth, while Tracxn’s database lists about Rs 164 crore.

Is FabAlley profitable?

Not at the net level in its last filed year: High Street Essentials posted a Rs 45 crore net loss in FY23, the same as FY22 (MCA via Entrackr, 2024). The company said it turned EBITDA-positive in FY24, but no audited FY24 profit figure is public to confirm it.

How much funding has High Street Essentials raised?

Reports differ. Entrackr put total raising at about Rs 180 crore before its May 2024 round, when it added Rs 50 crore ($6 million) led by Sangita Jindal; Inc42 described the total as “over $18 million” (Inc42 and Entrackr, 2024). Earlier backers include India Quotient and SAIF Partners (now Elevation Capital).

What is Weddings By Indya?

It is High Street Essentials’ premium occasion and wedding-wear line under the Indya brand, launched in 2022 at roughly Rs 5,000-25,000 price points. It reached about 10-12% of the business within a year, and the May 2024 funding round was raised specifically to expand it (Forbes India and Inc42, 2024).

Sources

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

• Entrackr, “FabAlley and Indya-parent posts Rs 185 Cr revenue and Rs 45 Cr loss in FY23,” March 2024.
• Entrackr, “Indya and FabAlley’s parent High Street Essentials raises $6 Mn,” May 2024.
• Inc42, “High Street Essentials Bags INR 50 Cr To Expand Into Wedding Wear Space,” May 2024.
• Inc42, “FabAlley Raises INR 20.6 Cr At Discounted Valuation Due To COVID-19 Impact,” 2020; and “SAIF Partners Invests $8.54 Mn In Online Fashion Store FabAlley,” 2018.
• Forbes India, “From western wear to wedding luxe, how Shivani Poddar built a large D2C brand,” 2024.
• YourStory, “FabAlley parent co High Street Essentials gets $8.54 M from SAIF Partners,” December 2018.
• IndianWeb2, “Fashion Brand FabAlley Raises $2M in Series A Round Led by India Quotient,” 2016.
• Tracxn, High Street Essentials Private Limited / FabAlley company profiles (revenue and headcount estimates), 2026.
• Entrepreneur India and Indian Startup News, coverage of the May 2024 Sangita Jindal-led round, 2024.

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