Textile major Arvind may acquire e-commerce site Freecultr

Textile major Arvind and e-commerce site Freecultr are supposed to team up. It is believed that Arvind Internet will acquire Freecultr. With this deal, Freecultr will become the latest brick-and-mortar store operator to snap up troubled online ventures.

Freecultr was started as an online fashion brand in 2011 and recently launched a new digital crowdoutsourcing platform, Freecultr Express. The concept behind this unique platform is that anyone can create and sell T-shirts through their tee-stores on the company’s sites without any need to make investments in inventory, operations or logistics. Under this format, Freecultr produces T-shirts of the selected designs and the creator gets commission on sales. So far, 5,500 individuals have used the platform to create more than 24,000 designs.

Till now there are nine Freecultr-branded brick-and-mortar stores across the country. In 2011, Freecultr raised 4 million dollars (Rs 26.6 crores) from Sequoia. In 2012, it got another 9 million dollars (Rs 60 crores) from Sequoia and Moscow-based venture firm Ru-net. The company again tried to raise funds recently but in vain. This prompted them to get in touch with Arvind. The word is that the company is boot-strapped lately and is trying hard to raise funds. If the deal comes through then Arvind will become the latest among host of offline retailers including the Future Group and Mahindra Group to acquire struggling players.

Arvind has many brands of its own such as Flying Machine and Excalibur. In addition it also sells global labels including GAP, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, US Polo Association, Gant, Children’s Place and Aeropostale.