[Funding alert] D2C personal hygiene startup Svish raises $400K in seed round

D2C personal hygiene startup Svish on The Go said it has raised $400,000 in its seed round from investors including Nueva, among others.

The startup said it will use the funds to diversify its product offerings, strengthen its R&D portfolio, and increase its presence in retail chains and modern trade.

"Our new business development will primarily focus on launching new products as we are all set to introduce 40 new offerings in different categories including personal hygiene and body care," Ishan Grover, CEO and Co-founder of Svish, said in a press statement.

Founded in 2020 by Ishan and Jaideep Mahajan, an expert in the advertising industry, Svish's flagship product is a "Deo-jaisa sanitiser" (a sanitiser that smells better than a body deodorant), available on its website and ecommerce platforms including Amazon, Nykaa, and CRED, among others.

Svish has been bootstrapped since November 2020. The co-founders invested Rs 1.40 crore of their own money in the startup's initial days. It has already crossed Rs 1 crore in revenue in less than 10 months of operations, it claims.

Nearly 30,000 consumers so far have brought Svish's products, the company said.

Nueva, which led Svish's seed round, is an India-domiciled category II AIF Fund, where LC Nueva Investment Partners is the investment manager. It has a Rs 300 crore corpus that it uses to invest in early-stage tech startups.

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D2C brands in India have seen a mercurial rise in terms of institutional investments, following a major boom during the height of the pandemic. According to Statista, India currently has 190 million people shopping online — up from 110 million in 2018.

Startups, including Honasa Consumer-owned Mamaearth and SUGAR Cosmetics (Vellvette Lifestyle Pvt Ltd), have seen their valuations and revenue surge during the pandemic due to heightened consumer demand.

Multiple brands in the beauty and wellness space are focusing heavily on brand building and increasing their marketing spends to capture more buyers, across platforms.