Mumbai-based beauty and personal care e-commerce platform Purplle is planning acquisitions and to test the omnichannel distribution format as it looks to scale business following a $75 million fund-raise at a valuation of around $600 million.
The company also has a long-term plan to go public in the next five years.
“The valuation was $630 million post money and the investment was led by private equity fund Kedaara Capital. They have taken many companies public. Our existing investors, which include Sequoia Capital and Blume Ventures, have also participated. Till now the aggregate amount of funds raised is $170 million,” said co-founder and CEO Manish Taneja.
Taneja, an IIT Delhi graduate, forayed into the beauty segment with online platform Purplle along with co-founders Rahul Dash and Suyash Katyayani, both graduates from IIT Kharagpur in 2012. The decision, Taneja explained, was due to the category offering scalable business with good gross margin.
“We will invest the proceeds in working capital, capex and marketing. We are looking to build our own brands and also looking to acquire brands from high quality entrepreneurs who are probably good at brand building but not at finance, HR or logistics. We also plan to further invest in technology and products,” Taneja said.
The company will experiment with the omnichannel route of having both an online and offline presence.
“We will definitely try the omnichannel route. Sometimes early next year we will open up a few stores and see how it plays out for us. It will be an experiment to start with,” said Taneja.
“There is no hurry to go public. But I think we will be ready as a company from a corporate governance, quality of financial statement point of view and whenever the time is right we will hit the market in the next four-five years,” said Taneja.
Bengal on top
The e-commerce platform at present has a gross merchandise value of around Rs 100 crore a month and Bengal’s contribution to overall GMV is around 12 per cent.
“Our top 3 cities would be Calcutta, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. While Calcutta constitutes the major portion of business in Bengal, cities like Siliguri and Jalpaiguri are not far away,” said Taneja. Around one third of the company’s business comes from its homegrown brands with Good Vibes from the cohort becoming a Rs 150 crore brand.
Taneja remains bullish on the growth prospects of the online beauty and personal care market in the country.
“It’s a $20 billion market out of which 4-5 per cent comes from online. It is expected to become $25-27 billion within the next 3-4 years of which 15 per cent is expected to come from online. That is a sizable market to play in,” he said.