Alap Naik Desai Mumbai-based online baby products shop Hopscotch has raised $2 million investment from the Singapore-based LionRock Capital, Adi Godrej's younger daughter Nisa Godrej, Skype co-founder Toivo Annus and Diapers co-founder & CTO Wei Yan, reports Times of India. The company plans to use the investment raised for improving its technology and marketing. Launched by former Diapers.com executives Rahul Anand and Lisa Kennedy in October 2012, Hopscotch offers products like baby and kids apparel, shoes, toys & books, school products, moms & maternity products and accessories from brands. However, what's different is the business model: instead of an inventory-based model like Babyoye and Firstcry, it offers these products in a flash sales model. Typically private sales models don’t scale as much as standard e-commerce does, which is why sites like Exclusively.in pivoted from flash sales to the traditional e-commerce model. Internationally as well, Fab.com pivoted from flash sales to become a regular e-commerce player a while back. It will be interesting to whether Hopscotch will fare any better in this model in the forthcoming future. The funding should help with the promotion and exposure. The curated inventory will have to do the rest. Competitors: FirstCry had raised $15 million from Vertex Ventures, SAIF and IDG Ventures last month while Babyoye had raised $12 million from Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Tiger Global in April 2013. In October 2013, Lapis Marketing Pvt Ltd had shut down its baby products focused e-commerce venture Hushbabies to focus on its consumer marketing venture BabyBox.in, which the company had acquired from Snapdeal’s owner Jasper in 2012.
