Amazon invests Rs 175 cr in MyGlamm along with Ascent, Wipro Consumer

With the Series C round, beauty brand MyGlamm becomes the fastest beauty brand to cross the $100 million valuation mark in just three years of launch.

Beauty brand MyGlamm said on Thursday that it has closed its Rs 175 crore Series C funding round with investments from Ascent Capital, Amazon and Wipro Consumer. This also marks one of the first investments made by e-commerce giant Amazon in a beauty brand in India. With the Series C round MyGlamm becomes the fastest D2C (direct to consumer) beauty brand to cross the $100 million valuation mark in just three years of launch.

MyGlamm was founded in 2017 by Darpan Sanghvi and Priyanka Gill. The brand offers a range of over 600 cruelty-free and vegan products across makeup, skincare and personal care. While it is digital-first, MyGlamm also has over 10,000 offline points of sales across 70 cities in India.

“We are really excited about all that we will be able to learn from both, Amazon and Wipro Consumer along with the financial rigour that Ascent Capital brings, as we move forward to fulfil our vision of building India’s largest beauty company leveraging DTC, digital, and data,” said Darpan Sanghvi, founder and CEO, MyGlamm.

The company will utilise its latest funding to invest in product development, support data science and technology research. The funding would also help it increase offline expansion, fund working capital requirements and expand content creation capabilities and digital reach of POPxo and Plixxo.

“With this fundraising, we will further invest in enhancing our content and influencer capabilities to not only build out MyGlamm as India’s largest beauty company but also consolidate POPxo as India’s leading digital destination for women and Plixxo as India’s most engaging influencer platform,” said Priyanka Gill, co-founder and president, MyGlamm.

Ascent Capital was the first investor in India’s largest online grocery delivery service BigBasket. It also backed other consumer brands such as FreshToHome (India’s largest seafood and meat brand) and Curefit (a fully integrated wellness platform).

“With its formidable founders and clear strategy the company is poised to be a significant player in direct-to-consumer segment,” said Vasanthakumar, partner, Ascent Capital.

Priyanka Gill, Co-founder & President, MyGlamm

MyGlamm witnessed strong growth and user retention within 18 months of launch. In 2019, it grew 400 per cent, and on the back of which, it began its Series C round in early 2020 with an aim to announce the fundraise in April 2020.

But with the national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, revenues came to a screeching halt, down to zero, as a result, the Series C round was put on hold. Once the lockdown was lifted, existing investors L’Occitane, Bessemer Venture Partners, the Mankekar family and Trifecta Capital re-initiated the Series C round with a renewed investment in MyGlamm.

“We have been tracking MyGlamm for over 15 months and are very impressed with the way they handled Covid uncertainty as well as built strong internal capabilities including POPxo acquisition,” said Sumit Keshan, managing partner, Wipro Consumer – Ventures. “We are very confident in their growth story and excited to be part of it and backing them.”

The company made some bold moves. It exponentially increased its digital reach by acquiring POPxo, India’s largest online community of women with 88 million female users and Plixxo, an influencer marketing platform with 75,000 influencers onboarded. The firm also doubled down on offline retail expansion by increasing its point of sales from 500 to 10,000 while also investing in opening India’s largest beauty experience store in Mumbai. These moves paid off, as MyGlamm came out of Covid-19 with revenues that were nearly 200 per cent of pre-Covid levels while also achieving EBITDA profitability.