MyGlamm buys online parenting platform BabyChakra

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty retailer MyGlamm has ventured into the mother and baby care category with BabyChakra acquisition.  

With this deal, MyGlamm, which sells cosmetics, skin, and personal care products, and BabyChakra will invest Rs 100 crore in building a mother-baby content-to-commerce platform over three years, according to a statement.  

BabyChakra has an online community of over 25 million families and 3,500 doctors on its platform. It claims that, on an average, a mother spends more than 40 minutes daily on its digital assets and that 95% of the content on its platform is user-generated. 

Naiyya Saggi, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of BabyChakra, will join the MyGlamm group as co-founder and president. She will spearhead the mother-baby vertical and build the overall community vertical for the group. She will also join the MyGlamm board. 

Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed. 

MyGlamm is established in e-commerce, Saggi said. “The e-commerce journey of BabyChakra is new for us and that’s where the alignment with MyGlamm comes. So far, we have been building our digital assets with parents and doctors and have been identifying latent needs that mothers have. With MyGlamm we wish to co-create products with our community of mothers and doctors at scale and use MyGlamm’s expertise for product development and distribution," she said. 

Mumbai based BabyChakra will continue to operate as a standalone brand. Over 8-12 months, MyGlamm will have a portfolio of more than 80 baby personal care products with 50% of them launching this year itself. This will include baby essentials such as washes, lotions, and creams suited for Indian skin and climate and will be branded as BabyChakra products. 

Priced between Rs 199 and Rs 400, these will be available across MyGlamm’s omnichannel touchpoints (both online and 15,000 offline point of sales across 70 cities). 

BabyChakra aims to reach a Rs 500 crore revenue run rate for products in the next three years. The platform is targeting to expand its user base to 100 million mothers in three years and more than 20,000 paediatrician and gynaecologist partners in one-and-a-half years. 

The mother and baby personal care market is $2.5 billion, growing rapidly at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14%, but category penetration is still low at only 15% in India. 

The mother-baby category is one of the fastest growing categories in the beauty and personal care segment in India, said Darpan Sanghvi, founder and CEO, MyGlamm. Last month, MyGlamm closed its Series C funding round at Rs 530 crore, which included a top-up of Rs 355 crore by Accel. 

“To increase penetration of the baby personal care category, one has to educate customers. Mothers coming on BabyChakra will first interact with doctors, ask questions of the rest of the community, and we will now complete the loop with products to meet her needs. This is how the category penetration will go up and that’s how content-to-commerce works really well," he said. 

BabyChakra will compete with other D2C players such as Mamaearth and The Moms Co. along with more established brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Himalaya Herbals baby care, Sebamed, and Chicco. 

Deep insights on various dimensions of the same customer will hold the key, especially with the blurring boundaries between beauty and healthcare, according to Sreedhar Prasad, internet business expert and former partner at KPMG. 

“That a beauty customer is or will be a mother is a good thesis to look at, where there could be significant synergies. Engagement, user-generated content, consultation lead insights on what a mother wants for herself or her child could significantly help in product innovation and need-based positioning. Safe beauty and skincare for children is also a large-use case that does not have a winner yet in India," he said.