[Funding alert] The Good Glamm Group turns unicorn; aims to acquire five more startups in personal care space

Close to two months after raising Rs 255 crore ($30.4 million) in funding, The Good Glamm Group has now raised $150 million in its Series D round led by Warburg Pincus and Prosus Ventures. 

Darpan Sanghvi, Founder and CEO, The Good Glamm Group, told YourStory that the company will utilise this capital to invest in product development, support data science and technology research, increase its offline expansion, fund its working capital requirements while also expanding the content creation capabilities and digital reach of its brands POPxo, Plixxo, BabyChakra, and ScoopWhoop. 

The founder added, “This is just day one, and our journey from one to 10 starts now.”

The Group will also continue to make investments in more beauty and personal care brands. Darpan explained, “We are looking to acquire a total of six more brands in the personal care and beauty segment. Of them, we have already announced the acquisition of The Moms Co.. We are looking at five more.” 

The Good Glamm Group, which is using content, community, and commerce to build a strong network of women consumers, had earlier said it would invest Rs 450 crore into acquiring companies that align to the three verticals of beauty and personal care, content and influencer marketing, and baby and parent care.

“We are delighted to back Darpan and the entire team at the Good Glam Group. With a strong portfolio of D2C brands and proprietary content assets, the group is well-positioned to scale rapidly and create a large digital-first business in the beauty and personal care space,” said Vishal Mahadevia, Managing Director and India Head at Warburg Pincus. 

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The Good Glamm Group comprises a portfolio of proprietary beauty and personal care brands — MyGlamm, Popxo, Plixxo, Baby Chakra, The Mom’s Co, and Scoopwhoop. 

The brand has a revenue run rate of $100 million and is targeting a $250 million run rate by March 2022. It said it is targeting Rs 500 crore revenue run rate for baby care products in the next three years. The Good Glamm Group is also looking to launch its IPO by FY 2023-24.

“The fund raise gives us the foundation to bring our vision to life. We aim to be the beauty and personal care conglomerate powered by digital. This capital gives us firepower, and it also works as a benchmark to the category,” said Darpan.

Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investments, India, Prosus Ventures, said, “We are very excited to partner with the Good Glamm Group to disrupt the beauty and personal care industry and this marks our first investment in the DTC category. The Good Glamm team has paired desirable, homegrown brands with compelling content, building an incredibly engaged community and positioning them well for future growth in India and beyond.” 

The Good Glamm Group’s proprietary digital assets comprise of POPxo (a women content platform with 88 million users), ScoopWhoop (a male content platform with 100 million users), BabyChakra (a parenting platform with 20 million mothers and a network of 10,000 doctors), and Plixxo (a creator and influencer management platform with 220,000 influencers). 

Founded in 2015 as MyGlamm, today, The Good Glamm Group is creating a community for women where they can discuss personal care issues and trends, and educate themselves about the products offered.

By 2020, the startup had over 2,000 points of sales across 50 cities in India, and by March 2021, it touched 10,000 points of sales across 70 cities in the country. In September 2021, it claims to have reached 30,000 POS across 100 cities in India.

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On the funding, Naiyya Saggi, Co-founder, Good Glamm Group, and Founder of BabyChakra, said, “It is a validation of what has so far been believed to be a counterintuitive bet. People had written it off, bringing multiple brands under one roof and having an omnichannel route seemed counterintuitive. But the funding challenges that. Also, many passionate founders have believed in the bet.” 

She added that Baby Chakra is getting into more breadth and depth, with a focus on content and community for new parents, and products. “We are getting to the depth in terms of how you formulate high-quality products at scale,” she added. 

The concept of content commerce is not new. Both China and the US have companies with a strong content commerce presence, with popular platforms such as Little Red Book, Refinery29, and BuzzFeed. The idea is simple – why not use the wide reader base that content websites have to create an alternate source of revenue?

Priyanka Gill, Co-founder, The Good Glamm Group, Founder, PopXO and Plixxo, added, “It is a proof of concept of how content to commerce can roll out at scale. That success anchors all the conversations we have had. For example with the content acting as top of the funnel, MyGlamm’s conversion number grew, and customer acquisition cost dropped.” 

She added now the idea is how do add the multiple existing brands and make them a part of the ecosystem. “It is an India-first innovation we are seeing in the D2C space,” she added. 

In October 2021, The Good Glamm Group acquired The Moms Co., which marked the largest merger and acquisition transaction in the D2C space to have taken place in India.

The Group also acquired India’s largest digital media platform for men, ScoopWhoop, marking its entry in the male segment, and will be investing Rs 500 crore ($66 million approximately) in the men’s segment over the next two years.