Trase Footwear founders reacquire brand, hold angel investment round

Trase Footwear’s founders Jitin Goel and Dhruv Gupta have reacquired the direct to customer brand from Upscalio and led an angel funding round of $500,000 to help scale the business.

“We will be using these funds as a working capital to build a team, inventory, and for marketing,” said the business’ co-founders Goel and Gupta, ET Bureau reported. The funding round saw participation from Sirona Hygiene’s co-founders Deep Bajaj and Mohit Bajaj as well as Strategic Investments by Design’s founder Shiven Malhotra and Aditya Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company’s CEO and head of international business Vikas Gautam.
 
“Despite the success of Trase under Upscalio stewardship, it did not align with our long-term strategy,” said Upscalio’s CEO Gautam Kshatriya. “We are pleased to divest it back to its founders and new investors, who are well positioned to scale the brand further.”
 
Upscalio decided to focus on brands in the kitchen and home segments of the market and so reached a deal with the business’ founders. Trase Footwear is targeting Rs 1 crore monthly revenue by July and plans to make its offline debut this financial year.
 
“We wanted a partner which can help us in reaching [the] Rs 100 crore revenue mark, so we got into this partnership with Upscalio,” said Goel and Gupta. “We target to clock Rs 100 crore revenue in the next three years. We aim to grow 100% year-on-year. We are eyeing to close this fiscal with Rs 25 crore in revenue, FY 25-26 at Rs 50 crore, and FY 26-27 at Rs 100 crore.”