Sneaker reseller Mainstreet Marketplace raises $2 million from Deepinder Goyal, Nikhil Kamath, others

Founded by 24-year old Vedant Lamba as a YouTube channel in 2017, Mainstreet Marketplace had last year raised pre-seed funding of around $1,25,000 (around Rs 1 crore) from angel investors, including Cred founder Kunal Shah.

In an exclusive interaction with ET, Lamba said, “We’re deploying the funds towards hiring an experienced senior management team, expanding our brick-and-mortar presence in more cities, and building the quality of our customer experience”.

Lamba said that the startup closed FY22-23 with Rs 24 crore in revenues, and is expecting to have a topline of Rs 100 crore in FY23-24. The company currently has two stores — one each in Delhi and Mumbai — and plans to add six more by the end of this year.

“As a business, we’ve been bootstrapped from day 1. We had to be very creative when it came to scaling. We never had any capital leverage’’, Lamba said. “This capital will help us scale by hiring more people, and increasing the quality of customer experience”.

Lamba sees Mainstreet as a customer-to-business-to-customer (C2B2C) marketplace such as Olx, Spinny, CarDekho, etc., but for status-driven commodities. “We’re playing the game of status. Sneakers are the first bit of the puzzle for us. We’re figuring out what’s next in the marketplace for status-driven commodities,” he added.

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The Mainstreet Marketplace platform offers brands such as Nike, Adidas, Yeezy, Supreme, Drewhouse, and claims to have an exclusive clientele that includes Bollywood celebrities such as Ranbir Kapoor, Karan Johar, Ranveer Singh, etc.The Mumbai-based company earns revenues through commissions on reselling of prized sneakers, which have found a huge market for collectors over the years — globally and in India — who pay the top dollar for these products. A pair of sneakers available on Mainstreet costs anywhere between Rs 8,999 to Rs 8,24,999.

Some of these products, especially the limited edition shoes, see their prices increase with time. In this segment, Mainstreet Marketplace competes with the likes of VegNonVeg, Superkicks, and a number of other individuals who resell these products.

“Consumption as a sector is something we are really bullish on. Often investing in a company is really investing in the person who runs the company. Vedant is not only one of the brightest young operators we have met in a long time, but also a friend. Excited to be on this journey with him’’, said Kamath.