Goat Brands is acquiring 80% controlling stake in Chumbak
New Delhi: Goat Brands Labs, which owns a host of direct to home or D2C brands, is in talks to acquire Chumbak, two people familiar with the development said.
One of them said Goat Brands is acquiring 80% controlling stake in Chumbak, a Bengaluru-based home and lifestyle brand.
Chumbak operates several standalone stores in malls and sells its products including ethnically-designed mugs, plates, bags, watches, home decoration items and other accessories.
“This is part of Goat’s plan to take winning brands and take them global,” said the second person.
Rishi Vasudev, co-founder of Goat Brands declined to comment.
Chumbak’s co-founder Shubhra Chadda did not respond to calls and WhatsApp messages when IndiaRetailing tried seeking comment from her.
Chumbak was founded by Vivek Prabhakar and Shubhra Chadda in 2010, for which the couple sold their house for Rs. 45 lakh in 2009.
Chumbak (pronounced Ch-oom-buck) – means a magnet in Sanskrit was launched with the idea of designing fun souvenirs and collectibles inspired by India, according to the company’s website.
The brand sells its products through more than 70 exclusive brand stores, leading e-commerce sites, and chumbak.com.
The hybrid model has greatly benefitted the company, which claims to have grown 300% year-on-year.
The brand relies heavily on technological channels to maximize its online revenues to 30%.
The brand was an online-first brand. It ventured offline in May 2013 by launching its first store at Forum Mall at Koramangala in Bengaluru. “We wanted to learn from our experiences from running our own stores and then figure out other cities,” said the brand on its blog. The second store was at Orion Mall in Bengaluru.
The brand was developed entirely through social media marketing and word-of-mouth, with no marketing budget. For Chumbak social media is crucial to its overall objectives. It has used social platforms to build a strong brand recall as it did not have budgets for marketing campaigns. The strategy paid off as Chumbak became one of the first Indian brands to be featured in a Facebook case study worldwide.
