City startup reaches finals of TiE Women Global Pitch

Coimbatore: City-based startup School Basix, which was one of the 26 startups selected from across five countries, represented India at the TiE Women Global Pitch Competition held earlier this month.
The two-and-a-half-year old startup gives vendors of school products an online presence and helps them with sourcing, logistics, working capital and even last mile delivery to schools and parents.It was recognized for helping struggling school retailers during the pandemic.
As many as 15,000 startups from 26 chapters from across six countries participated in the event. “There were three rounds — a presentation, impact on society and an online session with venture capitalists,” School Basix founder and CEO Swathy Rohit said.
Of the 15,000 startups, School Basix was one of the 26 that got to travel to the final rounds in Dubai to make a pitch in front of more venture capitalists. “It definitely garnered a lot of attention to TiE Coimbatore and Coimbatore startups,” said Rohit, who had started it as a company providing school uniforms.
The firm slowly began getting unorganized uniform sellers and tailors, who often had issues with schools and parents because of sizing issues and material issues among others, to join them by creating websites and helping them with sourcing and logistics.
Incidentally, it was a few months before Covid-19 that the firm got school retailers selling shoes, books, textbooks and stationary to join them. “We give them a catalogue of the products we can source for them, so they get to list the products they think will sell in their region or to their customers, besides their area of speciality. We then source the products and do the last mile shipping to parents or schools,” said Rohit.
This helped as many as 300 retailers, who were struggling to survive during the pandemic, which left them with massive stocks, locked in capital and no sales.
School Basix has created websites for 162 vendors across 25 cities in five southern states.