Good Glamm Group has raised $150 million in funding co-led by Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus at a valuation of $1.2 billion, becoming the 35th start-up in 2021 to achieve the unicorn status — companies with valuations of $1 billion or more. The series D financing, which includes a mix of primary and secondary investments, was also backed by Alteria Capital, L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, Amazon, Ascent Capital and the Mankekar Family Office.
The fresh capital will be used to fund offline expansion, support data science, technology research and for investments in product development. A portion of the funds will also be deployed to expand content creation capabilities and digital reach of its brands POPxo, Plixxo, BabyChakra and ScoopWhoop, the company said in a statement.
The investment comes less than two months after the digital-first conglomerate bagged ₹255 crore in funding led by Trifecta Capital, underlining the growing investor appetite for the D2C (direct-to-consumer) beauty and personal care space. Last month, Purplle added $75 million to its kitty.
Good Glamm Group is stitching up a content-to-commerce play, wherein the strategy is to have a library of sharp, targeted content, leverage its reach and get more consumers to buy products. The acquisition of ScoopWhoop that reaches about 70 million users every month, 70% of whom are men, and POPxo, which claims to be followed by 88 million women, is expected to give the company a wider play within the content space. Having a strong content portfolio also creates avenues for brands to target new users and add to their product range. For instance, with ScoopWhoop in its fold, Good Glamm Group is eyeing a foray into the $1.5-billion male grooming segment.
The company has earmarked ₹2,000 crore [a mix of ₹750 crore in cash and the balance in stock and earnouts] for acquisitions. Having recently added The Moms Co. and ScoopWhoop in its fold, four more acquisitions are on the anvil, founder and CEO Darpan Sanghvi had told Fortune India in a recent interview. “India does not have enough depth wherein one category or one brand can do a couple of thousand crore in revenue. A skincare brand can get to ₹500-700 crore at best. If you want to build a $1-billion revenue company, you need to own 8-10 brands, each of them making ₹500- 700 crore in revenues or maybe ₹1,000 crore,” Sanghvi had said.
