Apparel producer and retailer of accessories, ‘Chumbak’ has applied to the government for single brand licence to operate a combination of its own stores and e-commerce website. A person familiar with the development said the Bengaluru-based company has filed its single brand application with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) late last month.

Chumbak, which is funded by Matrix Partners and SeedFund, becomes the latest among the foreign-funded homegrown single brand companies, including Fabindia and online furniture seller Urban Ladder, to seek single brand license that allows them to carry out retailing through brick-and-mortar as well as online stores. Chumbak declined to comment on its DIPP application.

This has been a long-standing demand of ethnic products retailer Fabindia which has FDI and wanted to sell online. Prior to that, such companies could sell online only if they manufactured 100 per cent of their products themselves.

Currently, a unified single brand permission allows such companies that sell a host of products under a single label to sell through various retailing options including wholesaling, own stores, franchisees and through company owned e-commerce.

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