BENGALURU, Aug 6 (ENN) – Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL), India’s largest retailer, said on Wednesday it has acquired Furrl, a Bengaluru-based fashion discovery startup, in an all-cash deal for an undisclosed sum, as it looks to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities in fashion e-commerce.
Furrl’s entire team, its proprietary AI styling platform and its commerce app will be integrated into Reliance Retail’s operations, the company said, as part of a broader push to embed AI-driven personalisation across its consumer businesses.
Furrl, founded in 2022 by Esha Tiwary, uses artificial intelligence to recommend fashion products based on a shopper’s style preferences, rather than relying on traditional keyword-based search. The platform sources products from more than 200 fashion and lifestyle brands and lets customers browse full outfit recommendations from a catalogue of over 50,000 items.
Tiwary will join Reliance Retail to lead new AI initiatives focused on fashion discovery and personalised shopping, the company said. The rest of the Furrl team will also move to Reliance Retail, with the product team set to focus on scaling the startup’s technology across the retailer’s wider commerce operations.
“We started Furrl with the belief that shopping should feel personal, inspiring and effortless. Joining Reliance Retail gives us the opportunity to bring that vision to millions of customers by combining our AI technology with one of India’s largest retail ecosystems,” Esha Tiwary, Founder and CEO of Furrl, said in a statement.
“The addition of Furrl’s specialised technology strengthens our portfolio of AI capabilities and supports our vision of making shopping more intuitive, inspiring and customer centric,” Jeyandran Venugopal, RRVL’s chief executive and president, wrote in a letter to Tiwary that she shared on social media.
Prior to the acquisition, Furrl had raised more than 80 million rupees ($960,000) from investors including PeerCapital, Sadev Ventures and Bharat Founders Fund, according to Indian startup media reports.
Reliance Retail did not disclose financial terms of the deal. The acquisition adds AI-powered fashion discovery technology to a company that already runs some of India’s largest fashion and lifestyle retail chains, as competition intensifies among Indian e-commerce firms to deploy AI for product recommendations and customer engagement.
Rivals including Myntra and Nykaa have rolled out AI-based shopping assistants in recent months to make product discovery more conversational and personalised, while a clutch of startups are also building AI-driven shopping tools for the Indian market.
India’s e-commerce market is valued at about $165 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 22% to cross $450 billion over the next five years, according to industry estimates cited by startup research firm Inc42.
Compiled by ENN Newsroom from company statements and public reporting.
Ruchi Kumar is the associate editor at Entrepreneur News Network and TVW News India, where she leads editorial strategy, brand storytelling, and startup ecosystem coverage. With a strong focus on innovation, business, and marketing insights, he curates impactful narratives that spotlight India’s evolving entrepreneurial landscape. She has written extensively on fintech, AI and emerging startups.