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Wharton Business Plan Competition
By siliconindia
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Monday, 23 May 2011, 23:43 IST
Bangalore: Stylitics, which is a fashion Insights Company that provides a better way for brands to understand and connect with consumers, has been named as the winner of the Wharton Business Plan Competition Michelson Grand Prize. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced that student team won the $30,000 Michelson Grand Prize of the 2011. The prize was awarded at the Wharton School's annual Venture Finals, April 27, 2011.
Stylist is co founded by Mumbai based Rohan Deuskar. He was born in Pune, India and raised in Mumbai with brief stints in Lagos and Abu Dhabi. In the year 2000, he went to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, where he majored in Economics and dabbled in everything from running an underground radio station to working on Bob Dylan's stage crew. He graduated from Northwestern in 2004, and then joined a small tech consulting startup called Vibes Media in the mobile/wireless space doing business development and product innovation. After five exciting years during which the company grew 15-fold, he headed to Wharton where the transition into venture capital happen after graduation with a focus on global wireless connectivity.
The Wharton Business Plan Competition was founded in 1998 which fosters the entrepreneurial spirit and business literacy of University of Pennsylvania students, helping to promote the creation of new ventures. It is managed by Wharton Entrepreneurial Programs and a management committee comprised of students from throughout the University of Pennsylvania.
The idea for the start-up came to Rohan Deuskar after he observed that the fashion industry's market research is still caught in a time warp of 50 or 60 years ago, tracking fashion through focus groups and market surveys. That's when he collaborated with U.C.-Berkeley student Anand Kulkarni to shape his concept and then founded the start-up with Zach Davis, another MBA student at Wharton well versed in the "agency world." He met Davis while working at Wharton alumni company Vibes Media, a mobile marketing firm based in Chicago, Ill. They plan to move to New York and launch the site into the market in early June.
Rohan hopes Stylitics to become the "Nielsen for clothing," referring to the company best-known for its television ratings system. Stylitics would be asking consumers to share what's in their closet using a social networking site. A user would list what clothing they own, how they wear it, what they like and what they don't. The company provides fashion companies data, with privacy of users protected, on customers preferences.
Stylitics uses social media, games, rewards, and virtual closet features to give engaged, stylish, hand-picked consumers a fun and easy way to share their styles and opinions with their favorite apparel brands. One can add what they are wearing and can get a personalized outfit history, a view into your own style trends, and much more. This interesting insight into fashion and raising trends will definitely create ways for the Mumbai based native.