Personal care & beauty products e-tailer Purplle raises Series A funding from IvyCap

Mumbai-based Manash Lifestyle Pvt Ltd, the company behind Purplle.com, an e-commerce platform for personal care and beauty products, has secured an undisclosed amount in its Series A round of funding from early-to-growth stage VC firm IvyCap Ventures.

The funds will be used for marketing as well as to grow Purplle's fulfilment capacity. A portion of the capital will go towards expanding its salon listings and discovery site businesses.

As part of the deal, Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner of IvyCap, will join Purplle's board.

"We have clearly demonstrated cost-efficient scale up in our beauty products marketplace business and are making rapid inroads into the beauty services market .With this round of funding, we are confident we will establish ourselves as India's top destination for beauty," said Manish Taneja, co-founder and CEO of Purplle.

The startup was founded by Taneja and Rahul Dash in late 2011, and the website went live in January 2012. Puplle.com is an e-commerce platform that offers products pertaining to skin care, make-up, haircare, body care and beauty appliances (electronics). Purplle has listed salons and spas in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon. It also offers information such as contact numbers, addresses, reviews, location and the offers available at these salons and spas.

Purplle had earlier raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding from Blume Ventures, Mumbai Angels and Chennai Angels in August 2013.

"We strongly believe several e-commerce verticals remain relatively untapped in India, and that niche players with rich content and in-built intelligent discovery features are going to be the next wave of value creation, especially in the Indian context," said Gupta.

"Against this backdrop, beauty and wellness is of particular interest, as it is a fast growth sector with inherent loyalty characteristics far beyond many other verticals," he added.

Purplle mainly faces competition from ventures like Nykaa besides horizontal e-com players such as Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon.

Systematix Capital Services was the sole advisor to Purplle.com in this transaction.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)