Manash Lifestyle Pvt. Ltd, which operates beauty products and services marketplace Purplle.com, said on Thursday it has raised $30 million (Rs 212 crore) in a Series C round of funding led by global investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Existing investors IvyCap Ventures, Blume Ventures and JSW Ventures also participated in the funding round, Purplle said in a statement.
Rahul Dash, co-founder of Purplle, said the company will use the fresh capital to expand and strengthen its supply chain, marketing and technology.
“Given our rate of progress, we expect our growth in scale and size to expand ten-fold by the end of 2023,” he added.
Purplle was founded by Manish Taneja, an IIT Delhi alumnus, and Rahul Dash, an IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, in 2012. The company operates a beauty and personal care e-commerce platform. It said it has 47,500 stock keeping units (SKUs) across more than 1,000 third-party and own brands.
The company said it seeks to tap into India's $7 billion online beauty and personal care market that is estimated to be growing at a compound annual rate of more than 15%.
Niladri Mukhopadhyay, a managing director at Goldman Sachs, said Purplle's combination of technology with its innovative brands and localised beauty content is a key differentiator in this rapidly growing segment of India’s e-commerce sector.
Goldman Sachs established its onshore presence in India in December 2006 and has deployed more than $3.4 billion in the country since then.
Earlier this month, VCCircle reported that an India investment platform set up by Goldman Sachs to focus on agricultural commodities firms and animal feed makers had sealed its maiden transaction.
Earlier, the US-based company invested in Bengaluru-based Versé Innovation Pvt. Ltd, which operates local-language content and news aggregator Dailyhunt, in March.
Goldman Sachs has in the past backed several companies including Livspace, Cytecare Hospitals, ReNew Power, Tejas Networks, BPL Medical, Nova Medical Centres, Tikona Digital Networks, Essel Highways and online furniture retailer Pepperfry.
Beauty is big business
The broader beauty and personal care segment has attracted a slew of investors in the past fewyears.
In April, beauty e-tailer Nykaa raised Rs 100 crore in a fresh round of funding from US-based private equity firm TPG Growth. Nykaa had also raised capital from mid-market private equity firm Lighthouse last September, paving the way for existing investor TVS Capital Funds to make an exit.
Mid-market private equity firm Samara Capital inked back-to-back deals in cosmetics firms Blue Heaven and Nature’s Essence this year. In June, beauty and makeup products brand MyGlamm secured Rs 100 crore in a funding round led by US-headquartered Bessemer Venture Partners and the Mankekar family office.
Also in June, Scentials Beauty Care and Wellness Pvt. Ltd, which mainly offers beauty products endorsed by celebrities, mobilised Rs 25 crore in its Series A round of funding from Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of consumer goods giant Unilever Plc.