E-commerce roll-up firm 10club acquires 3 gardening brands for unknown sum

The acquired brands specialise in seeds, soil, flower bulbs, manure, planters, tools and every other kind of equipment a consumer might need for their home gardening needs

10club, a leading e-commerce roll-up player today announced the acquisition of three lawn and garden brands - Kraftseeds, Gate Garden and Kriti Kalash. The brands specialise in seeds, soil, flower bulbs, manure, planters, tools and every other kind of equipment a consumer might need for their home gardening needs. The firm didn’t reveal the value of the transaction.

The category saw an unprecedented spike during the pandemic, as people stayed home and looked for ways to make their homes feel fresh, while cultivating hobbies that relieve stress and improved their homes.10club believes that this trend is here to stay and aims at focusing its energies on capitalising on the growth in this category. As per their estimates, the current category size is about $900 million with less than 10 per cent online penetration, growing at 70 per cent year-over-year in 2020-2021.

“We are extremely bullish on the Home category and the acquisition of three strong brands in the Lawn & Garden segment gives us a strong foothold and more importantly will complement the six new acquisitions that we will announce shortly. With these acquisitions, we will be clocking a revenue of over $50mn in the home category alone,” said 10Club, Co-founder and COO Deepak Nair.

The founders of the brands Kraftseeds, Gate Garden and Kriti Kalash saw promise and potential in their business almost two decades earlier. Regardless of the challenges of a category that wasn’t as lucrative back then, they spent a considerable amount of time understanding preferences of the urban consumer and took this nascent business online via Amazon.They developed an expertise in sourcing seeds and a strong network with farmers who could contract farm for them, customised to meet their requirements of seed varieties, seasonality, volume, and specific quality standards, enabling them to source the best quality seeds at the most reasonable prices. Over the years, they expanded their product lines to include other products such as planters, soil and coco peat, gardening tools and flower bulbs. When Covid hit and the category saw a boom, they were not only equipped to cater the demand from a product mix perspective but the network they had spent years to build also paid off.

“We want to reach more households across India, encouraging consumers to grow plants and fall in love with gardening,” said Gaurav and Shaina, Founders, Kraftseeds. “We believe that to achieve this, 10club is the right partner for us as they are equipped with an extremely capable team and are aligned with our vision.”

Kraftseeds is a leading brand for gardening tools and seeds on Amazon with an offering of 3,600 SKUs (stock keeping units)  on the platform.

Through the acquisition, 10club aims to carve out niches for each brand, from structuring their product mixes to their pricing models, so that each of them has its unique role and offering. Channel expansion constitutes an important aspect to boost growth by capitalising on platforms such as Jiomart, Meesho and Flipkart.