Indian e-commerce platform Purplle raised $45 million in new capital to fund expansion in the world’s second-largest online market.

WHO: Founded in 2012 by Rahul Dash and Manish Taneja, Purplle is a beauty platform selling nearly 50,000 products from over 1,000 brands as well as its own private label to an audience of 7 million monthly active users in India.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: “Purplle has been on a robust growth trajectory. Even with a COVID year, we have delivered >90% GMV CAGR for the last 3 years. This, while scaling our private brands successfully; Good Vibes is already a $20.7 million brand. The investment will help to shape Purplle into a multibillion-dollar, digital-first, beauty and personal care enterprise,” said Manish Taneja, co-founder and Chief Executive of Purplle.

“Despite COVID, Purplle delivered remarkable growth. We believed in their mission of democratizing beauty across the heartlands of India, with affordable and accessible products. Our investment this year will further enable Purplle to strengthen its position as a market leader in the beauty e-commerce segment,” commented Arjun Anand, Executive Director, Verlinvest, while speaking on the investment, a year after funding Purplle’s extended Series C Round.

Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner of IvyCap, said, “We were confident that digital would disrupt and redefine the beauty industry in India. We continue to believe in the growth of the company and thus have retained our stake for Fund 2.”

“We are excited to partner with Purplle as we believe they have cracked the beauty playbook of value retailing with 3 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. We see Purplle emerging as a dominant beauty destination as the online beauty penetration grows from 10% to 25%+ over the next decade,” said Sakshi Chopra, Principal, Sequoia India.

DETAILS:

• Purplle raised $45 million in a Series D, bringing the total raised to $95 million to date. Sequoia Capital India joined existing investors Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, and JSW Ventures in funding the newround.
• According to TechCrunch, this round values the business at about $300 million, up from $150 million in its 2019 Series C round.
• The brand said in a statement said the investment will bolster the brand’s ambition to deliver 8-10 times growth in the next 4-5 years.
• In July 2020 Mint reported the business achieved total sales worth $50 million in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2019, and was targeting to achieve GMV sales worth $85-100 million by the end of 2020.
• Early backer Ivy Cap Ventures invested about $2 million in 2015 and took a partial exit in this round, which delivered a 22x return and 1.35x of its entire Fund 1.
• Purplle raised Series C funding at the end of 2019 from Goldman Sachs and Verlinvest. In a secondary exit deal in July 2020, two early angel investors secured a 40x return on their angel investment, offloading their stake to Goldman Sachs.
• Verlinvest made an $8 million investment in January 2020, which funded ESOP redemptions.