Startup Deep Dive : Yoho Footwear — how a Delhi comfort-shoe brand sold three million pairs on Rs 17 crore of filed revenue

Yoho has sold more than three million pairs of shoes since it launched in 2021, yet the legal entity behind the brand booked just ₹17 crore of revenue in the year to March 2024. Those two facts sit oddly together, and the gap between them is the most useful thing to understand about this Delhi footwear startup: it is smaller, in booked terms, than the marquee names on its cap table suggest.

Those names are unusual for a shoe company selling at ₹1,000–2,500 a pair. Rajeev Misra, the architect of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, and Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder of Paytm, are both personal backers. So is Gulf Islamic Investments, which led the company’s pre-Series B. This deep dive traces how Yoho went from a shoe shop in Kanpur to a venture-backed comfort-footwear brand, using company filings for the registered entity (Innovative Lifestyle Technology Private Limited) alongside its own stated numbers, and it is careful to say which is which.

Quick facts

What Yoho does

Yoho is a direct-to-consumer footwear brand that sells comfort-first shoes for men and women, priced mostly between ₹1,000 and ₹2,500 a pair. It designs and markets the products, outsources manufacturing, and reaches buyers through online marketplaces, its own website, quick-commerce apps and a growing set of multi-brand offline stores.

• Range: over 100 active styles across 700-plus SKUs (Inc42), spanning casual sneakers, loafers, slip-ons, formal shoes, arch-support slippers and running shoes.
• Signature lines: Blinc (a hands-free step-in sneaker the company calls an India first), Lofos (flexible loafer), Freestep (slip-on), Waves (arch-support slipper) and the Catapult running range with a carbon-fibre plate the brand markets as Carbonburst (Inc42, company site).
• Comfort claim: a proprietary FootPharma insole the company says holds its cushioning for 1 to 1.5 years, versus a few months for standard memory foam (Indian Retailer interview, company-stated).
• Buyer base: about 70,000 customers a month as of 2025 (Indian Retailer, company-stated).

The origin

The founding insight was retail, not technology. Ahmad Hushsham had run a small shoe shop in Kanpur and later led footwear categories at Jabong and then Paytm Mall, which meant he had watched, at counter level and at platform level, what Indian shoppers actually bought and returned. The recurring complaint was simple: affordable shoes were uncomfortable, and comfortable shoes were expensive. That gap, in a market dominated by either cheap unbranded footwear or costly imports, was the opening.

He met Prateek Singhal through a mutual friend in Kanpur. Singhal was a mechanical engineer from IIT-Delhi who had worked at Tata 1mg in healthcare and at Zomato in food delivery, so he brought consumer-tech and operations experience to Hushsham’s category knowledge. The pairing — a shoe merchant who understood demand and an engineer who understood building a consumer business — set up Yoho’s pitch: engineer comfort into an affordable shoe and sell it directly, cutting out the traditional distributor margin. The registered company, Innovative Lifestyle Technology Private Limited, was incorporated in Delhi in October 2020, and the brand went to market in 2021.

The struggle years

Yoho is young, so its hard years are compressed rather than long, but the record shows the usual D2C footwear traps. The first was scale: a brand selling at ₹1,000–2,500 a pair has to move an enormous number of units before the numbers matter, and in its first full year the business was tiny — first-year revenue of about ₹3 crore, on the company’s own account.

The second was channel economics. Yoho grew by leaning on online marketplaces, which move volume but take fees and push discounting, so the brand had limited pricing power exactly when it needed to fund product development and marketing. The company has been open that customer acquisition ran at about ₹150 a customer against a roughly 3:1 return on ad spend (Inc42) — workable, but only if repeat purchases follow, which is unproven in a category people buy a few times a year.

The third pressure was competition it could not outspend. Yoho launched into a market already held by Campus Activewear, Relaxo, Bata and RedTape at the value end, and by Nike, Adidas, Skechers and On at the premium end. Every one of those is far larger, and several are listed with revenues in the thousands of crore. Yoho’s answer was to compete on comfort technology and price rather than brand budget — a bet that has not yet shown up as an audited profit.

The turning point

The turn was the October 2024 pre-Series B. Yoho raised ₹27 crore led by Gulf Islamic Investments, with Rajeev Misra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Rukam Capital and Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah also in the round (Entrackr, October 2024). It was the moment a small comfort-shoe brand acquired both a larger balance sheet and a set of names that changed how the company was read by the market.

The numbers on each side of that round show why it mattered. Going in, Yoho had sold “over one million pairs” since launch and carried about 100 styles (Entrackr, October 2024). By the time of its next raise in May 2026, the company said it had crossed three million pairs sold and was pushing a performance-running range and an offline network (StartupSamadhan, 2026). The pre-Series B, in other words, funded the jump from a one-million-pair online brand to a three-million-pair omnichannel one — the single event that took Yoho from experiment to contender.

The money behind it

Yoho has raised roughly ₹70 crore (about $7.3 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0) across four rounds; Inc42 and Tracxn put the total at about $8.1 million, a difference that reflects round timing and exchange rates. The shape of the funding:

• Pre-Series A, 2022: ₹20 crore, backed by Rajeev Misra, Rukam Capital and Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Entrackr, Inc42). This was the round that first attached marquee names to a value-priced shoe brand.
• Pre-Series B, October 2024: ₹27 crore led by Gulf Islamic Investments, with Rajeev Misra, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Rukam Capital and Pankaj Chaddah participating (Entrackr). GII’s cheque brought a larger raise and a Gulf/MENA expansion angle.
• Latest round, May 2026: ₹23 crore, reported as about ₹15 crore equity and ₹8 crore debt, again involving Gulf Islamic Investments and Rajeev Misra, earmarked for offline retail and the performance-running push (StartupSamadhan, 2026).

What each backer changed: Rukam Capital provided the first institutional validation and, per Inc42, roughly ₹7 crore across two rounds; Rajeev Misra and Vijay Shekhar Sharma gave the brand credibility and signalling out of proportion to its size; Gulf Islamic Investments moved it from an angel-funded brand to an institutionally led one and opened the door to Gulf markets. Yoho has not published a valuation for any round, so any figure circulating on that should be treated as unconfirmed.

How it makes money

Yoho earns the spread between what a shoe costs to make and land, and what a customer pays, minus the cost of selling it. Because it is asset-light on manufacturing, its economics are set less by factories than by channel mix and marketing efficiency.

• Product margin. Shoes are designed in-house and made by contract manufacturers, so gross margin depends on sourcing and the ₹1,000–2,500 price band. The company positions comfort technology (FootPharma, Carbonburst) as the reason a buyer pays more than for an unbranded shoe.
• Channel mix. Roughly 70–75% of sales run through marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Ajio and TataCliq; about 20% through the D2C website; and the remainder through quick commerce (Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart) and offline (Inc42, Indian Retailer, company-stated). Marketplaces bring reach but charge commissions and encourage discounting.
• Marketing engine. The brand has cited customer acquisition cost of about ₹150 and return on ad spend near 3:1, with average revenue per user around ₹757 (Inc42, company-stated) — figures that only work if buyers return.
• Offline build-out. Yoho reported about 500 multi-brand outlet tie-ups by late 2024 and has set targets of 2,000 to 2,500 outlets plus exclusive brand stores with digital foot-scanning (Entrackr, StartupSamadhan). Offline lifts trust and basket size but adds working-capital and inventory risk.

The part people get wrong: the headline “three million pairs” makes Yoho sound like a large retailer. In booked terms it is not. Volume at a low price point, sold largely through fee-charging marketplaces, converts into modest net revenue — which is exactly why the filed and the stated numbers diverge so much.

The numbers

This is the section to read slowly, because Yoho’s revenue is reported three different ways depending on the source. The registered entity’s filings show one figure; the company’s interviews cite higher brand-level numbers, which appear to be gross merchandise value or targets rather than booked revenue. All figures are ₹ crore.

Two honest caveats. First, the same registered entity also houses another brand (Factor Notes) per Tracxn, so entity revenue is not a clean read of the Yoho brand alone. Second, no audited profit or loss figure is publicly available for FY23, FY24 or FY25 in the filings I could access, so this piece does not state one. The reliable spine is this: booked entity revenue rose from under ₹1 crore in FY22 to about ₹17 crore in FY24, while the company publicly targets a ₹100-crore-plus run rate. The distance between ₹17 crore filed and ₹45 crore-plus stated is the GMV-versus-booked-revenue gap, and it is the number a reader should keep in mind.

Where the money comes from

The revenue split is heavily online and heavily third-party, which is both Yoho’s growth engine and its main vulnerability.

• Marketplaces: about 70–75% of sales, across Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Nykaa, Ajio and TataCliq (Inc42, Indian Retailer, company-stated).
• Own website (D2C): about 20% of sales — the highest-margin channel because it avoids marketplace commissions.
• Quick commerce and offline: the remaining roughly 5–10%, including Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart, plus multi-brand outlets. The company said its Blinkit launch grew about 400% within a month (Indian Retailer, company-stated).
• Product mix: comfort casuals (sneakers, loafers, slip-ons, slippers) are the base; the Catapult carbon-plate running range is the newer, higher-price push aimed at performance buyers.

The surprise is how young the offline and quick-commerce channels are: a brand that reads as “online D2C” is now betting its next phase on 2,000-plus physical outlets and instant-delivery apps, a very different cost structure from the marketplace model that built it.

The risks

• Undisclosed profitability. With no audited profit or loss figure public, and marketing running at about ₹150 CAC on a ₹1,000–2,500 price band, it is not possible to confirm the unit economics work at scale. A comfort brand that depends on repeat purchase in a low-frequency category carries real risk if retention disappoints.
• Marketplace dependence. With roughly 70% of sales through platforms it does not control, Yoho is exposed to commission changes, discount-led competition and thin pricing power. Growing the higher-margin D2C and offline channels is the stated fix, but it is unproven at the target scale.
• Incumbent competition. Campus Activewear, Relaxo, Bata and RedTape at the value end, and global names at the premium end, each dwarf Yoho and can outspend it. Competing on comfort technology and price, rather than budget, is a narrow lane.
• Execution and capital intensity of offline. Scaling from about 500 outlets toward 2,000–2,500, plus exclusive stores with foot-scanning, adds inventory, rent and staffing costs that can erode the asset-light model if outlets underperform.

The takeaway

Yoho’s story is a lesson in reading startup numbers with discipline. The same company can honestly be described as having sold three million pairs and as having booked ₹17 crore of entity revenue in FY24, because the first is a lifetime unit count and the second is a single year of net revenue — and neither is the ₹100-crore figure the brand markets toward. The transferable lesson is not about shoes. It is that “revenue” in a founder interview, “GMV”, and the figure in a Registrar of Companies filing are three different measures, and a serious reader asks which one is being quoted before drawing any conclusion about how big a company really is.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Yoho and when?

Yoho was founded by Ahmad Hushsham, its CEO, and Prateek Singhal. The registered entity, Innovative Lifestyle Technology Private Limited, was incorporated in Delhi in October 2020, and the brand launched in 2021. Hushsham previously led footwear categories at Jabong and Paytm Mall and ran a shoe shop in Kanpur; Singhal is an IIT-Delhi mechanical engineer who worked at Tata 1mg and Zomato.

How much money has Yoho raised, and from whom?

Yoho has raised roughly ₹70 crore across four rounds. Backers include Rukam Capital, Gulf Islamic Investments, and personal investors Rajeev Misra of SoftBank and Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm. Gulf Islamic Investments led the ₹27 crore pre-Series B in October 2024, and a further ₹23 crore round was reported in May 2026.

What is Yoho’s revenue?

The registered entity reported about ₹17 crore of revenue in FY24 per RoC filings compiled by Inc42 and Tracxn (Entrackr cites ₹20 crore), up from ₹3.7 crore the year before. The company has publicly cited a higher brand-level figure of about ₹45 crore for FY24 and a ₹100–110 crore target for FY25; those appear to be gross or target figures rather than audited booked revenue.

Is Yoho profitable?

No audited profit or loss figure is publicly available in the filings accessible for this piece, so profitability cannot be confirmed. The company has disclosed marketing metrics such as a customer acquisition cost around ₹150 but has not published a bottom-line number.

What does Yoho sell?

Yoho sells comfort-focused footwear priced mostly between ₹1,000 and ₹2,500, including casual sneakers, loafers, slip-ons, arch-support slippers and a carbon-plate running range. It markets proprietary comfort technology such as its FootPharma insole and sells through marketplaces, its own website, quick commerce and offline outlets.

Sources

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

• Inc42 — Yoho company profile (funding, revenue, investors), 2026.
• Inc42 — “How Rukam Capital Backed Yoho Is Making Bold Strikes In India’s Footwear Market” (founders, product lines, metrics), 2024.
• Entrackr — “D2C footwear brand Yoho raises Rs 27 Cr in pre-Series B round” (funding, pairs sold), October 2024.
• StartupSamadhan — “Yoho Raises Rs 23 Crore” (2026 round, three million pairs, offline plans), 2026.
• Indian Retailer — “How Yoho Footwear Grew 12x in a Year and Plans to Hit Rs 1,000 Cr by 2030” (revenue, channel split, FootPharma), 2025.
• FashionNetwork India — “Yoho eyes Rs 100 crore annual recurring revenue in FY25”, 2024.
• Everything Startups — “Yoho Footwear Raises INR 20 Crore in Pre-Series B Funding” (market size, positioning), 2024.
• Tofler / ZaubaCorp — Innovative Lifestyle Technology Private Limited, CIN U51909DL2020PTC371873 (incorporation, directors, capital).
• Tracxn — Innovative Lifestyle Technology Private Limited and Yoho company profiles (entity revenue, Factor Notes), 2026.
• Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate, September 2026.

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.