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CHK, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) footwear startup has raised $2.5 million in funding round from investment firm Accel, jewellery retailer Bluestone and some individual investors.
Bluestone invested about Rs 12 crore (around $1.3 million) in the company in November 2024.
DealShare co-founder Sankar Bora’s CHK plans to use the new capital to speed up production and boost its research and development (R&D) efforts before its public launch in April.
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Co-founder Sankar Bora, said, "After leaving DealShare, I wanted to create a brand in fashion which has always been close to my heart. I found sneakers to be a promising category given the structural change in usage patterns among the younger generations. Moreover, there is a white space in design innovation focused sneakers in premium and mass-premium categories."
“With CHK, we are excited to get an early ringside seat for what promises to be an exciting journey in building a manufacturing-led innovative D2C footwear brand out of India,” said Prashanth Prakash, partner at Accel.
About CHK
Founded in 2024 by Sankar Bora, Deepan Babu, Bharat Mahajan and Deepak Patil, the Bengaluru-based CHK has a manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu and plans to start sales through its own D2C website before moving into offline retail.
The company currently has about 25 employees in Bengaluru and Tamil Nadu and aims to grow the team to 100 by April.
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