Startup Deep Dive : Zivame — the lingerie brand that shrank its way to its first profit

Zivame spent a decade telling India’s women that buying the right bra should not require a trip they dread. In FY25 the company built on that promise reported revenue of ₹164.7 crore, its third straight annual decline, even as its net loss narrowed to ₹15.7 crore and it turned an operating profit for the first time, according to regulatory filings compiled by corporate-data platform Tofler.

That is the contradiction at the centre of this piece: a company built to grow a market has spent three straight years getting smaller on purpose, trading a shrinking top line for a route to breakeven that eluded it for thirteen years. It got the chance to try only because Reliance Retail bought its way into control in 2020, after Zivame’s own attempt to raise $50 million from outside investors had failed.

Quick facts

What they do

Zivame sells women’s intimate wear and related categories — bras, panties, shapewear, activewear, sleepwear and loungewear — to Indian women who, the company has always argued, are underserved by a fragmented, badly stocked, sizing-blind offline trade. It reaches them through its own website and app, through marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart and Nykaa, and, increasingly, through a network of more than 170 exclusive physical stores that Reliance Retail has helped fund since 2020. Its pitch has stayed consistent since launch: a size range wide enough to actually fit, private product education instead of an untrained shop assistant, and delivery to a home address instead of a counter transaction that many Indian women still find uncomfortable.

The origin

Richa Kar, an engineer from BITS Pilani who went on to study management at NMIMS, was working in SAP’s retail consulting practice when she got a close look at Victoria’s Secret’s sales data as a client account. What struck her was not the brand’s revenue but a smaller, uncomfortable fact she kept hearing from Indian women around her: buying lingerie in an Indian store meant dealing with poorly trained staff, almost no size range beyond the basics, and a level of social discomfort that made many women simply avoid shopping for it altogether. Online retail, still a novelty in India in 2011, offered a way around all three problems at once — privacy, a real size range, and product information instead of a counter conversation. Kar built the idea on her own savings and ₹35 lakh borrowed from friends, and named the company Zivame, meaning “radiant me”. Finding office space and even a landlord willing to rent to a company selling lingerie was, in her own retelling, one of the first hurdles — some landlords ended the conversation the moment they heard what the business sold.

The struggle years

The idea worked well enough to raise repeated rounds of venture funding through 2012 and 2013, but the business model underneath it did not hold up. Zivame began as a marketplace, listing other brands’ inventory and taking a commission of roughly 15–20% a sale — a structure that could not fund the marketing spend needed to keep teaching a new, taboo category to Indian buyers. By the year to March 2016, net sales had grown to about ₹62.6 crore, but the net loss had grown faster, jumping 84% year-on-year to ₹54 crore. The following year was worse in a different way: net revenue fell to around ₹60 crore and sales revenue dropped 15%, even as annual expenses stayed near ₹117 crore, according to an Inc42 analysis of the period. That analysis noted that against the cash left from a September 2015 funding round, Zivame’s run-rate meant it “will have just enough to last only a few more months” without fresh capital.

The company responded by rebuilding its own economics: it shifted from the low-margin marketplace model to selling owned inventory and private labels, a change management said moved margins from commission-level to 50–60% on private-label lines. It was not enough to keep Richa Kar in the corner office. In January 2017 she stepped back from day-to-day operations, handing charge to Shaleen Sinha, and later that year she resigned as CEO altogether, staying on only as a board member. It was the clearest sign yet that the founder-led, growth-first version of Zivame had run its course; what followed was a slower rebuild under new management, with the net loss falling to ₹32 crore in FY18 and revenue climbing to ₹140 crore by FY19, alongside a further narrowed net loss of ₹19.5 crore that year, as later disclosed in Reliance Industries’ own investor filings.

The turning point

The rebuild bought Zivame time, not safety. The COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 froze store footfall and dented online demand for a discretionary category at the exact moment Zivame needed fresh capital to keep expanding; its attempt to raise a further $50 million from outside investors failed to close. That failure, not a boardroom strategy memo, is what opened the door to Reliance. In July 2020, Reliance Brands bought out Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures’ roughly 15% stake, and by the second half of that year it was in talks to take full control, at a price reportedly close to $160 million, or about ₹1,200 crore, for 100% of the company, per Inc42’s reporting at the time. Reliance Industries confirmed the stake in its own disclosures by November 2020, classifying Zivame’s parent, Actoserba Active Wholesale, as an associate company. On the other side of the same year sat a smaller, steadier number: by mid-2020 Zivame’s then-CEO, Amisha Jain, said retail footfall had already recovered to 60–70% of pre-COVID levels, and that the company was tracking toward a break-even month by December 2020. A founder-built, twice-restructured lingerie brand that had just failed to raise its own rescue round became, within months, a subsidiary of India’s largest conglomerate.

The money behind it

• Total raised: more than $70 million (Tracxn puts it at $70.8 million) across roughly nine rounds between March 2012 and October 2019, from a base of 17 named investors — 13 institutional and 4 angel backers.
• Chiratae Ventures (then IDG Ventures India): an early-stage backer from the March 2012 Series A, present across multiple follow-on rounds.
• Kalaari Capital: in nearly every round from the 2013 Series B onward, one of the most consistent institutional backers through the company’s marketplace-to-owned-brand pivot.
• Zodius Capital / Khazanah Nasional Berhad: anchored Zivame’s largest disclosed round, a $40 million raise around September 2015, alongside Kalaari and Unilazer Ventures; Zodius stayed on as lead investor into the 2018–19 rounds.
• Unilazer Ventures (Ronnie Screwvala): backed the company from 2015 and held roughly 15% of it by 2020, the stake Reliance Brands bought out first.
• Angel backing: included Ratan N Tata, among four named angel investors.
• March 2019 Series C: ₹60 crore (about $8.4 million) led by Zodius, per YourStory’s contemporaneous report — one of the last outside-investor rounds before Reliance’s entry.
• Valuation: independently pegged at $85–92 million (~₹705 crore) as of 2019 by Crunchbase-sourced trackers; Reliance’s 2020 move for full control was reported at close to $160 million (~₹1,200 crore) for 100% ownership, though that figure comes from a single contemporaneous Inc42 report and was never confirmed as the final price by either party.
• Current ownership: Reliance Retail Ventures, through Actoserba Active Wholesale, is estimated to hold 85–90% as of 2025 (Tracxn), with legacy investors and founders holding the remainder.

How it makes money

Zivame earns the way most owned-inventory apparel retailers do: it buys or manufactures stock, prices it with a retail margin, and sells it through channels with very different cost structures.

• Own website and app: highest gross margin per unit because there is no marketplace commission or franchise cut, but it carries Zivame’s full cost of digital marketing, warehousing and last-mile delivery, and higher return rates than physical retail.
• Third-party marketplaces (Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa): extends reach to shoppers who default to those platforms, at the cost of marketplace commission and less control over the customer relationship.
• Exclusive brand outlets and franchise stores: more than 170 stores as of early 2026, with 60–80 more franchise-led stores planned for tier-2 and tier-3 cities over the following year, per Business Standard’s February 2026 report citing COO Kiruba Devi; franchise stores shift working-capital and rental risk to a partner in exchange for a smaller per-unit margin for Zivame.
• Private label vs marketplace commission: the pivot away from a pure commission marketplace (15–20% take) toward owned private-label product, which management has said carries 50–60% gross margins, is the single change that made the current business viable at all.
• The part people get wrong: Zivame is often described as an “online lingerie brand”, but by FY23 roughly 40% of its revenue was already coming from physical stores, with management targeting a 50:50 online-offline split — the growth engine is now bricks-and-mortar as much as e-commerce, per Inc42’s November 2023 reporting.

The numbers

Figures below are as reported to the Registrar of Companies by Actoserba Active Wholesale Limited, compiled by Tofler; unit is ₹ crore.

• FY24: revenue fell 42% year-on-year to about ₹193 crore and net loss widened 34% to ₹39 crore, independently reported by both Indiaretailing and Apparel Resources in November 2024, citing the same RoC filing.
• FY25: revenue fell a further 14% to ₹164.7 crore, but the company recorded its first positive operating profit, ₹8.4 crore, per Tofler’s compilation — a shift corroborated directionally by COO Kiruba Devi’s statement to Business Standard in February 2026 that Zivame “turned profitable during the last quarter”.
• Direction of travel: two consecutive years of shrinking revenue alongside a narrowing net loss point to a deliberate trade of scale for unit economics, rather than a demand collapse alone.

Where the money comes from

• Channel split (FY23): about 60% of revenue online (own site, app and marketplaces) and 40% offline (stores), with management targeting a 50:50 split going forward (Inc42, November 2023).
• Geography: tier-2 and tier-3 cities already account for 30–40% of revenue, a proportion cited consistently in both Inc42’s 2023 reporting and Business Standard’s February 2026 report on the brand’s next store push.
• Store footprint: fewer than 50 proprietary stores before 2020; more than 170 by early 2026, spread across roughly 57 cities as of the 2023 count, concentrated in tier-1 and tier-2 India (Inc42).
• The surprise: a brand that built its name as India’s answer to online-only lingerie shopping now earns nearly half its revenue, and a rising share of its growth, from physical stores — the opposite of the direction most Indian D2C brands have travelled.
• Category mix: the core bra and lingerie range has been broadened with shapewear, activewear and sleepwear/loungewear lines, plus specialised ranges such as True Curve for fuller figures and post-mastectomy bras, widening the basket beyond a single category (company reporting via Inc42, November 2023).
• Next geography: management told Business Standard in February 2026 it was exploring franchise entry into Southeast Asia, with a possible first store within a year — a plan at an early, unconfirmed stage.

The risks

• Brand overlap inside its own parent: Reliance’s retail portfolio also includes Clovia, Amante and Hunkemöller (via its Delta Galil-linked ventures), meaning Zivame competes for the same intimate-wear shopper as brands under the same ultimate owner — a cannibalisation risk Inc42’s November 2023 reporting flagged directly to Zivame’s own leadership.
• Online returns as a structural margin drag: return rates on Zivame’s own online channel run under 15% but consistently higher than its offline stores, a mechanical cost every apparel e-commerce business with fit-dependent products has to absorb, per the same Inc42 reporting.
• Shrinking revenue as the price of profitability: two straight years of double-digit revenue declines (FY24 and FY25, per Tofler) alongside narrowing losses show a business trading scale for unit economics; if the shrinkage continues after profitability is reached, it risks becoming a smaller, profitable niche player rather than the category leader it once aimed to be.

The takeaway

Zivame’s real lesson is not about lingerie or even about e-commerce. It is about the moment a growth-stage company discovers that its channel’s underlying economics cannot fund its own customer acquisition. A commission marketplace taking 15–20% a sale could never carry the cost of teaching millions of Indian women to trust an unfamiliar way of buying an intimate product; only owning the inventory and the margin made that spend sustainable. Zivame found that out only after a near-death year of ballooning losses and a founder’s exit, and it needed a conglomerate’s balance sheet to survive the next crisis when COVID arrived on top of an already thin cushion. The transferable point for any founder is blunter than the popular retelling: changing the product rarely saves a business with the wrong unit economics; changing who owns the margin sometimes does.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Zivame and when?

Richa Kar and Kapil Karekar founded Zivame in 2011 in Bengaluru, after Kar identified a gap in how Indian women could shop for lingerie while working in SAP’s retail consulting practice.

Is Zivame still an independent company?

No. Reliance Retail Ventures, through Actoserba Active Wholesale Limited, is estimated to hold 85–90% of the company as of 2025, after buying out early investors starting in 2020 (Tracxn).

Is Zivame profitable?

It reported an operating profit of ₹8.4 crore in FY25, its first year of positive operating profit, though it remained net-loss making at ₹15.7 crore for the year, per RoC filings compiled by Tofler.

How much funding has Zivame raised?

More than $70 million across roughly nine rounds between 2012 and 2019, from investors including Kalaari Capital, Zodius Capital, Chiratae Ventures, Khazanah Nasional Berhad and Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures, before Reliance took a controlling stake starting in 2020.

Why did Zivame’s revenue fall in FY24 and FY25?

Revenue fell 42% in FY24 to about ₹193 crore and a further 14% in FY25 to ₹164.7 crore, even as losses narrowed, indicating a deliberate shift toward higher-margin sales over volume rather than a single external shock (Indiaretailing, Apparel Resources, Tofler).

Sources

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

• Tofler, “Actoserba Active Wholesale Limited” financial summary (accessed September 2026)
• Indiaretailing, “Zivame net loss widens 34% to Rs 39 crore”, November 2024
• Apparel Resources, “Zivame sees decreased sales and increased losses for FY ’24”, November 2024
• Business Standard, “Reliance-backed Zivame bets on small cities with 60-80 new stores: COO”, February 2026
• Inc42, “How Reliance Owned Lingerie Brand Zivame Cracked The Omnichannel Code”, November 2023
• Inc42, “Reliance Brands Looks To Acquire Zivame, Takes Over Ronnie Screwvala’s 15% Share”, July 2020
• Inc42, “What The Financials: The Indian Online Lingerie Triangle: Zivame Bumbles, PrettySecret Fumbles, Clovia Hustles”, June 2018
• BusinessToday, “Reliance confirms buying stake in lingerie retailer Zivame”, November 2020
• YourStory, “[Funding Alert] Zivame gets funding of Rs 60 Cr”, March 2019
• Tracxn, “Zivame — Funding & Investors” and “Zivame — Latest Shareholding & Valuation” (accessed September 2026)
• Inc42 Company Profile, “Zivame — Funding, Revenue & Investors” (accessed September 2026)
• Storyboard18, “Zivame CEO Lavanya Pachisia steps down after leading brand’s expansion”, October 2025
• Startup Stories / company retellings of Richa Kar’s founding account (background on founding insight, cross-checked against Inc42 and Business Standard reporting)

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