Sequoia, Verlinvest lead growth round in Purplle; IvyCap books partial exit

Online beauty products marketplace Purplle, operated by Mumbai based Manash Lifestyle, has raised $45 million (Rs 325 crore as per current exchange rates) in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital India and returning investor Verlinvest. 

Returning investors Blume Ventures and JSW Ventures participated in the round, as per a statement. 

The latest infusion, it said, will strengthen the company’s goal of achieving 8-10X growth in the next four-five years. 

As part of the round, early stage investor IvyCap Ventures, which entered Purplle as a Series A investor, exited part of its stake in the startup.  

“We have invested in Purplle.com from our Fund 1 and Fund 2. With an initial investment of INR 15 crore from our Fund 1 growing by manifolds to INR 330 crore, our partnership has been rewarding. We continue to believe in the growth of the company and therefore we have retained our stake for Fund 2. Our belief in the brand and the vision of its founders ‘Beauty for All’, enabled us to generate 1.35X of our entire Fund 1 from Purplle,” IvyCap founder and managing partner Vikram Gupta said. 

In December 2019, Purplle raised a Series C round led by Goldman Sachs https://www.techcircle.in/2019/12/12/goldman-sachs-bets-27-mn-on-beauty-products-e-tailer-purplle.  

“We are excited to partner with Purplle as we believe they have cracked the beauty playbook of value retailing with three key tenets – a business built on high retention and low customer acquisition cost (CAC), a wide assortment of brands offering quality at best prices, and an attractive private label portfolio mix,” Sequoia principal Sakshi Chopra said. 

Purplle was founded by IIT Delhi alumnus Manish Taneja, and IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Rahul Dash in 2012. The company operates a beauty and personal care ecommerce platform. It said it has 50,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) across more than 1,000 third-party and own brands.  

According to the company, its private label Good Vibes is an Rs 150 crore brand currently. With 7 million monthly active users, the startup claims to be growing at more than 90% year-on-year.  

It competes with startups such as Nykaa and MyGlamm.  

MyGlamm secured Rs 175 crore in a Series C round of funding last week, led by Ascent Capital, Amazon, and Wipro Consumer. The deal marked one of Amazon's first bets in the domestic beauty segment.  

As of November 2020, Nykaa, which is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), raised an undisclosed amount from Boston-based asset management firm Fidelity Management & Research through a secondary transaction.