Beauty services startup MyGlamm raises $6M from L'Occitane, others

On-demand beauty services startup MyGlamm has raised $6 million (around Rs 40 crore) in Series A funding from French beauty major L'Occitane International S.A, Indian mid-market private equity fund Tano Capital and Brand Capital.

The startup will utilise the capital raised to expand its services across India and to some overseas markets, it said in a statement.

As part of the deal, L'Occitane and Tano will have their representatives on the board of MyGlamm.

India's beauty and wellness industry has seen much investor action lately. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report estimated the sector to be worth Rs 1 lakh crore last year. Several online players that facilitate listings, discovery and booking of wellness services have raised external capital.

MyGlamm, run by Sanghvi Technologies Pvt Ltd, offers on-demand home services for beauty and hair care through its web and mobile platforms. Sanghvi Brands, a sister company, is the franchisee of L'Occitane Spa in India. Tano had invested Rs 62 crore in Sanghvi Brands in 2014.

"We intend to grow in eight more cities in India and also launch in the Middle East. The strategic support of L'Occitane in our growth will also be a big differentiator over the competition," a MyGlamm spokesperson said in an email response to Techcircle.in.

The company was founded in April 2015 by Darpan Sanghvi, who also runs a brick-and-mortar beauty and wellness company named Sanghvi Brands.

MyGlamm, currently present in Mumbai and Pune, claims to be gross margins positive, facilitating 600 services a day and hopes to register a net profit by the end of this year.

The online on-demand beauty services space saw the emergence of a number of startups in the last one year besides horizontal home services such as Housejoy and UrbanClap offering similar services. With beauty services offering high frequency, margin, and repeat business, a large chunk of revenues for many of the home services comes from beauty segment.

Gurgaon-based beauty and wellness startup Stylofie.com raised $250,000 in seed funding from Hong Kong-based Swastika Company Ltd. StayGlad, a mobile marketplace for on-demand beauty services, raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from Silicon Valley-based VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners in November last year.

Bangalore-based Vyomo Pte Ltd, which runs a beauty and wellness platform, had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by TaxiForSure co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna in June 2015.

In January last year, Mumbai-based Manash Lifestyle Pvt Ltd, the company behind Purplle.com, secured an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from early-to-growth-stage VC firm IvyCap Ventures.