Beauty Products Marketplace Purplle Raises $2.57 Mn Funding

Mumbai-based online beauty products marketplace Purplle has raised $2.57 Mn (INR 17.5 Cr) from a clutch of investors in a fresh funding round.

According to reports, the multiple-tranche fundraising was led by an unidentified London-based investment fund, with participation from Patrick Chong Fook Seng, the founder of Luxasia Group, and existing investor JSW Ventures, the venture capital arm of the JSW Group.

An email query sent to Purplle didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication.

Founded in 2011 by Manish Taneja and Rahul Dash, Purplle is an ecommerce platform that offers beauty products and beauty appliances.

It also runs its own private label, StayQuirky; the company claims that 47% of all nail colours being bought on Purplle are from  StayQuirky.

With a $6 Mn Series B funding round in place, the startup has already gained the attention of some leading startup investors including Blume Ventures, JSW Ventures, Chennai Angels, Mumbai Angels, and IvyCap Ventures.

In an earlier conversation with Inc42, the company claimed to have a daily conversion rate of 10%-11% across its website and app and claims to break even by September 2017.

With an identified target audience, user profiles are useful for the product recommendation solution to work seamlessly. They help the recommendation engine – the chatbot – to assess a new user’s complexion, hair type, makeup use and more in order to provide better service.

Purplle has already onboarded international known brands such as Maybelline, Revlon, etc, to make up a kitty of 650 brands comprising 50,000 SKUs in total.

Competition In Indian Beauty And Wellness Market

Beauty ecommerce websites like NewU, Nykaa, etc, with their exclusive focus on beauty and wellness products, are leading in the space.

One of the biggest players in the segment, Nykaa, recently raised  $24.45 Mn (INR 165 Cr) in a Series D funding round to help the startup fund its growth capital and expand its retail footprint.

At the same time, grocery delivery startup BigBasket has also decided to venture into cosmetics with its private label.

Prior to this, reports surfaced that Amazon India was planning to launch its own private label of beauty and personal care products. Also, Flipkart-subsidiary Myntra announced its plans to open beauty and wellness offline stores.

In a December 2016 report, FICCI estimated the Indian wellness industry would grow at a CAGR of 12% to achieve a $23.4 Bn (INR 1.5 Tn) turnover by 2019-20.

Another report claimed that the Indian beauty industry was looking towards a market value of $12.4 Bn (INR 80,000 Cr) by 2017-2018 and is expected to grow at the rate of 15% to 20%.

Confirming this, RedSeer Consulting also published a report suggesting that the domestic online beauty and personal care market was expected to cross $3.5 Bn by 2022 from the present figure of $300 Mn.

In a huge serviceable market like India, the latest push of funding can enable Purplle to explore the offline market in the increasingly competitive beauty and wellness market.

[The development was reported by Business Standard.]