With the start-up ecosystem growing at a rate never seen before, firms have gone public (like Zomato) raised record capital to expand and even evolve into unicorns (like BlackBuck). This time, it is Direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty products brand MyGlamm which closed its latest Series C funding round at $71.3 million (₹530 crores) after raising an additional ₹355 crores ($47.7 million) led by venture capital firm Accel India. Existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, L’Occitane, Amazon, Ascent, Manhekar family, Trifecta, and Strides Ventures also participated in this round.
The Series C round has been ongoing since March with a ₹175 crore investment from Ascent Capital, Amazon, and Wipro. “We are delighted to have closed our Series C and are excited to focus on execution and fulfilling our vision of creating India’s largest beauty company, with great brands and products built on the back of DTC, digital and data,” Darpan Sanghvi, co-founder, and CEO of MyGlamm, said in a statement on Monday. It is expected that its valuation will cross ₹2,000 crores following this funding round.
The four-year-old Myglamm, founded by Sanghvi and Priyanka Gill, claims to be India’s fastest-growing D2C beauty brand, with a range of over 800 cruelty-free and vegan products across categories such as makeup, skincare, and personal care. It also has over 10,000 offline points of sale across 70 cities of India. The start-up acquired women-centric content platform POPxo last August to become one of the largest 3C (content, community, and commerce) companies in South Asia, and Sanghvi credited Myglamm’s recent growth to the POPxo acquisition, saying that they were acquiring 2, 50, 000 new users every month “without spending any real money.” The company is currently targeting an annual revenue rate of ₹750 crores by December.
For now, it plans to ramp up its business in the South Asian market by expanding its product line and data science and technology research teams, increasing offline expansion from 15000 to 35,000 points of sale, and expanding the content creation capabilities and digital reach of POPxo and Ploxxo. The firm counts among its rivals names like Nykaa (which recently changed its status to a public company) and Purplle in the vertical beauty marketplace sector.
“We believe that the time is ripe for building our digital-first consumer packaged goods brands with a deep focus on content-to-commerce. Covid has only cemented this belief. The unique combination of content coupled with a compelling product line gave us the conviction to lead this round in MyGlamm,” said Anand Daniel, partner, Accel.
