Feeding the appetite for fashion preferences

Online venture

Fashion is something that got Veena Ashiya excited from the tender age of three and ever since that time, she fell in love with the aura it has. She went to NIFT, worked with leading brands in India and abroad and spent nearly seven years in the fashion industry, understanding various aspects of it.

“The power fashion has over people is incredible. It is an extension of one’s personality and aspirations and also works as a mood-lifting therapy,” says the Bengaluru based co-founder of the app ‘Diskover’, that aims to make fashion more personal to people.

“‘Diskover’ was born when my friend Ravi Soni and I were hanging out in Delhi, exploring designer stores. We realised that it was very hard to navigate through all those amazing stores to find what we wanted and the same thing held true when we went through fashion websites. Everyone was pushing products we did not want or offering discounts on products we did not like. No one seemed to care to understand users’ personal taste. All the websites intended to sell and not help people discover. Hence, we thought of a fashion discovery platform, which understands users’ tastes and preferences and helps them find products that would suit them,” shares Veena.

The duo started working on the app six months ago and launched it a month back on Google playstore as ‘Diskover Fashion’. Ravi, who comes from IIT, built the technology for the app.

    “The first feature we launched helps users find stores with unique fashion products within the City. We have partnered with 120 fashion stores in Bengaluru and created one place where one can view their collections,” she adds.

The app caters to various price points. It has high-profile brands like ‘Collage’, ‘Rain Tree’, ‘Shivan and Naresh’ as well as budget-friendly stores like ‘Ni Hao’, ‘Levitate’, ‘Smitten’ and ‘Ommel’ that have merchandise catering to different styles of fashion.

“Going to malls and seeing the same brands over and over again seems to have bored people. Our venture helps them find really unique fashionable stores all over the City. Be it bridal shopping or hunt for the latest crop tops, ‘Diskover’ can become one’s shopping buddy,” says Veena. Their team of curators reaches out to stores that are interested and helps them register with the app.

 The app, she highlights, has got a great response from fashionistas as it seems to have solved the fundamental problem of ‘where can I shop’.

     This gave the founders the confidence that evolved fashion users were looking for more than discounts and appreciated different products that match their own sense of style. In the months ahead, Diskover plans to expand to other cities as well and help people find unique products from both offline stores and online websites.

The ‘buy now’ button would help users instantly gratify the desire of owning the product. The “on call stylists” and “recommendations” would help cut down clutter and further help users find the most relevant products.