Pep Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns caffeine-infused D2C personal care brand mCaffeine, raised Rs 240 crore ($31.5 million) in a Series C round of funding.

WHO: mCaffeine was founded in 2016 by Tarun Sharma, Vikas Lachhwani, Vaishali Gupta, Mohit Jain, and Saurabh Singhal. The brand offers caffeine-infused products across skincare, body care, haircare, and lip care. Products are distributed DTC on Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart, and are also present in more than 5,000 offline stores across India.

WHY: The new capital will allow the company to scale its R&D capabilities and strengthen branding and distribution.

IN THEIR OWN WORDS: Tarun Sharma, CEO and co-founder of mCaffeine, said, "We are deeply excited by this fundraise, as it will enable us to scale up our R&D capabilities while we strengthen our brand awareness nationally and fortify our marketing and distribution efforts (both online and offline) across geographies."

"Within the past few months, the offline stores' contribution has grown to 10 percent with the brand being sold through 5,000 stores. We will strengthen the brand's presence in general trade and modern trade stores, besides shop-n-shop formats in department stores. We will expand our presence across 25,000 stores by the end of the year. In the next five years, we expect offline stores to contribute 40-45 percent to our revenues in India," Sharma explained.

He added, "We will now look at going beyond the caffeine ingredients proposition to either buy or build other brands in spaces such as cosmetics."

Sumeet Nindrajog, co-founder and Senior Partner, Paragon Partners, added: "This is Paragon's first investment in the personal care sector as the company evolves from a leading Indian digital-first brand to a full-fledged global omnichannel brand. We have been tracking the Indian beauty and personal care industry for the last 24 months and found that mCaffeine clearly stands out from its peers in terms of new product development capabilities, product efficacy, revenue density, customer retention and brand recall."

DETAILS:

• Pep Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns mCaffeine, raised Rs 240 crore ($31.5 million) in a Series C round of funding valuing the business at Rs 1,000 crore.
• This round brings the total funding raised to a total of $40 million (around Rs 304.27 crore) across three funding rounds.
• The round was led by Paragon Partners with participation by Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund, Sharrp Ventures, and existing investors Amicus Capital Partners and RPSG Capital Ventures.
• mCaffeine, currently with 55 products in the portfolio, is present in four major categories—face care, haircare, body care, and lip care—with plans to launch 15-20 products in the next year.
• In June 2019, the company received $2 million in a Series A round of funding from a group of investors led by RPSG Ventures.
• In September 2020, the business raised Rs 42 crore in a Series B led by Amicus Capital Partners.