Indian D2C beauty brand MyGlamm becomes unicorn with $150 million funding – TechCrunch

The Good Glamm Group, the parent firm of direct-to-consumer beauty brand MyGlamm, is the latest Indian startup to join the unicorn club.

The Mumbai-headquartered startup has raised $150 million in its Series D financing round from Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus. The new round, which also saw participation from Alteria Capital and existing investors L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Amazon, Ascent Capital and the Mankekar Family Office, values the four-year-old startup at $1.2 billion post-money.

That’s a 12x surge in its valuation from $100 million in March this year. MyGlamm was valued at $300 million in July, when it extended and closed its Series C financing round.

MyGlamm’s parent firm operates as a house of brands in the beauty and personal care spaces. It sells the vast majority of its products from its own website, app and more than 30,000 retail touch points.

The firm is one of the earliest startups in India that has demonstrated success with blending content and commerce to drive sales. Its content offering, coupled with an army of over 220,000 influencers, helps customers spot new products and spur engagement.

Tuesday’s announcement comes at a time when MyGlamm is aggressively acquiring brands to broaden its offerings. In an interview with TechCrunch, MyGlamm co-founder and chief executive Darpan Sanghvi said the startup has spent about $270 million in equity and cash in recent months to buy a number of firms that fit with the startup’s vision.

MyGlamm, which last month acquired direct-to-consumer (D2C) mother and baby care brand The Moms Co for over $65 million, is finalizing talks to acquire another four brands that it expects to close by the end of this year, said Sanghvi.

The inorganic push to expand MyGlamm has proven successful for the firm, which last year acquired POPxo, a startup that has built a community around content, influencers and commerce. POPxo — founded by Priyanka Gill, who joined MyGlamm as part of the acquisition — has supercharged the larger firm’s commerce in the past year. POPxo’s userbase, in the meantime, has ballooned to 88 million users, up from 60 million in July, said Gill in an interview.

Tuesday’s announcement is a major turnaround for Sanghvi, who started MyGlamm in 2017 after pivoting his previous venture. In an earlier interview, he recalled the struggle he faced raising money for a direct-to-consumer brand, which were not as popular in the world’s second-largest internet market just five years ago. To make matters worse, MyGlamm was also among the last direct-to-consumer startups to kick off its journeys in that wave.

Four years is a long time in the startup world. “For years South Korea and Japan have produced large and iconic D2C brands. It’s now time India joins that club and sets new charts,” he said.

“We are very excited to partner with the Good Glamm Group to disrupt the beauty and personal care industry and this marks our first investment in the DTC category. The Good Glamm team has paired desirable, homegrown brands with compelling content, building an incredibly engaged community and positioning them well for future growth in India and beyond,” said Ashutosh Sharma, head of Investments India at Prosus Ventures, in a statement.

Naiyya Saggi, co-founder of MyGlamm, said the startup has already achieved EBIDTA break-even and the new capital will serve as a war chest as it scales. By the second half of next year, MyGlamm plans to begin its international expansion, she said in an interview.

“Fundamentally, we will be growing the growth engines we already have in place. In the offline space, we have 30,000 retail touch points of sale. How do we grow this to 100,000 points of sale in the next six months?”

In about two and a half years, Good Glamm Group also plans to file for an IPO.

“With a strong portfolio of D2C brands and proprietary content assets, the group is well positioned to scale rapidly and create a large digital-first business in the beauty and personal care space,” said Vishal Mahadevia, managing director and India Head at Warburg Pincus, in a statement.

A number of direct to consumer brands, especially in beauty and wellbeing spaces, have made significant inroads in recent years. They have a lot of credit to give to Nykaa for paving the way. The fashion commerce firm , whose IPO was subscribed over 80 times, will begin trading on local Indian exchanges on Wednesday and is expected to see more than a 50% bump in its final issue price.