Amicus Capital leads investment in personal care brand mCaffeine

Pep Technologies, which manufactures and sells caffeine-infused personal care products under the mCaffeine brand, on Monday said it has raised Rs 42 crore (about $5.7 million) in a Series B round of funding, led by Amicus Capital.

Returning investors RPSG Ventures and Telama Investments participated in the round alongside consumer electronics brand boAt founder Aman Gupta, a statement said.

Founded in 2015 by Vikas Lachhwani and Tarun Sharma, mCaffeine previously raised $2 million in 2019. Lachhwani was earlier part of the operations team at self-drive car rental startup Zoomcar while Sharma used to head operations at cloud kitchen startup Box8.

“We will utilise the funds in scaling up our R&D capabilities significantly to consistently deliver high quality products that are well differentiated. Apart from R&D, we will invest in expanding our distribution across digital channels and continue to grow our operations, brand building and organizational scale up,” co-founder and CEO Sharma said, adding that the company had three term sheets for Series B, and chose Amicus Capital.

While there are about 20 products in the brand’s portfolio currently, the company plans to launch 15-20 products more, Sharma added.

The FMCG brand has sold over 2.8 million products amounting to Rs 100 crore in four years since its launch, the statement said, adding that it now aims to reach Rs 500 crore in sales over the next three years.

The Mumbai-based company bounced back from Covid-19 related disruptions to surpass its pre-pandemic revenue run rate, the statement said.

The company also aims to increase its online and offline presence. Currently, the products are available at 18,000 pin codes across India.

Founded in 1999, Bengaluru-based Amicus Capital is a private equity firm that invests in high growth middle-market companies in India. It is currently investing its first fund of $88 million in four sectors – financial services, consumer, healthcare and technology.

RPSG Ventures is a venture capital fund backed by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group as its sponsor investor, focused on investing in early stage consumer companies.