Smoor, the Luxury chocolate brand, is looking to achieve a turnover of Rs. 400 crore by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 60% while expanding its footprint from 20 to 200 stores across the country during the same period.
Vimal Sharma, Founder, Director and CEO of Smoor, said, “We anticipate the sales to go higher during the festive season. It’s not about valuation as such. All I can say is, we have reached a level that is better than the pre-covid level”.
“We are in the market to raise Series A funds and are in serious discussions with some prime equity firms. We expect to be in a position to close this in the next six months.”
He added that while Covid was a challenging period, it also provided an opportunity for Smoor as their business was ripe for a digital shift and the pandemic provided the nudge that it needed.
“We worked hard on getting our online experience to be equivalent to a store experience-whether it was our e-store or our presence on food aggregator channels, we offered our customers a uniform experience.
These changes helped us grow the aggregator business by 10x and our e-store business by 20x last year. The brand also expanded its reach to over 9,000 pincodes covering over 50 cities during the COVID, ” he said.
Sharma said the luxury chocolate market in India is estimated at around Rs. 3,500 crores.
“We hope to capitalise about 15% of this market in the next five years with our offline and online expansion. The market is also favourable, with customers willing to spend on such luxury chocolates for indulgence as well as gifting. Future expansion will also be championed by a fast-growing omnichannel presence with a focus on D2C websites to unlock greater geographical reach, ” he said.
In line with this, the company is entering the Chennai market through the D2C model and expanding its presence by opening offline stores in the near future.
Sharma said Smoor plans to open at least six more outlets in the city by the end of next year. “There have been several driving factors in Smoor’s remarkable growth journey, with strong innovation and expansion in its product portfolio being the key.
Separately from its vast retail and online presence, we launched exclusive portals to harness the potential of our most-loved offerings. ” He said that after a strong response to its D2C website, the brand also launched a new e-store exclusively for its macarons range, which offers a range of 21 macaron flavours.