Pune-based direct-to-consumer personal care brand Zlade has secured $1.5 million (around Rs 12.3 crore) in a fresh fundraise from a clutch of investors including Shivanssh Holdings (Vikas Poddar’ family office) and Bharat Forge Ltd’s deputy managing director Amit Kalyani, among others.
The fundraise comes on the back of Zlade joining hands with shavers and razor blades’ maker BIC to scale up its offerings across shaving solutions.
Founded in 2015, Zlade offers a range of products including manscaping trimmers, intimate hygiene solutions, razors and shaving essentials, among others. Currently, it has over 10,000 retail outlets and aims to grow physical presence to 30,000 retail outlets by FY24.
“Over the past four years, it has been our constant endeavour to align with the right partner for getting superior quality razors to the Indian consumer at the right price,” said Mihir Vaidya, co-founder and co-chief executive at Zlade.
“Our investment in Zlade is in-line with our thesis of investing towards branded consumer products that are catering to problems of new India, scaling consistently and high recall value,” said Yash Poddar, co-principal and chief investment officer at Vikas Poddar family office.
“Our partnership with Zlade is part of the business-to-business strategy for our blade excellence division. Zlade is on a strong growth trajectory,” said Thomas Brette, BIC Group partnerships and new business officer.
The male grooming startups in India have started grabbing investor’s eyeball for the last three to four years.
In February last year, Bombay Shaving Company had raised Rs 50 crore in a funding from Gulf Islamic Investments as part of its extended Series C financing round.
A year prior to that, Wipro Consumer Care had invested in Chandigarh-based male grooming startup LetsShave Pvt. Ltd.