Ecommerce Roll-Up Startup UpScalio Raises $15 Mn From Gulf Islamic Investments, Others

Delhi NCR-based ecommerce roll-up startup UpScalio has raised $15 Mn in a Pre-Series B round led by Gulf Islamic Investments (GII), a UAE-based financial services company. The round also saw participation from Northern Arc and Unity Bank.

UpScalio said it plans to utilise the funds to partner with more brands, invest in hiring across its key growth functions and build out other technology and growth capabilities. 

The fundraising announcement comes shortly after the Thrasio-style roll-up brand acquired a stake in consumer brands including next-gen computer brand Gizga, PC and phone accessories brand Tizum, laptop bags brand Aircase and kitchenware startup HomePuff. It aims to scale them into INR 200 Cr Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) brands over the next two years.

UpScalio was founded in April 2021 by Gautam Kshatriya, Saaim Khan and Nitin Agarwal. Since then, it has built a portfolio of 13 brands across categories such as home and kitchen, furniture, lawn and gardening. 

Apart from the recently acquired four brands, the roll-up startup’s portfolio includes travel bags startup Polestar, D2C furniture brand Green Soul Ergonomics.

Having acquired stakes in high growth ecommerce brands that sell on Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, and Myntra, UpScalio claims that it is working closely with founders to scale the brands 5-10X over a period of two to three years. 

UpScalio said that it has also been successful in building a team of more than 120 specialists across functions who have experience in scaling successful ecommerce companies in India. 

The ten-month-old startup claims to be working on acquiring and scaling the business by providing a full exit to founders of the acquired companies over time, helping to create wealth.

UpScalio offers multi-marketplace management, digital marketing, branding, logistics, sourcing, finance and business operations — all optimised using advanced analytics to consumer goods brands.

“We look at three aspects when we partner with a business. The first is founder-fit, as we will be working with the founders for a good amount of time. Thus, it is important to have a shared sense of values,” Kshatriya told Inc42 in a previous interaction. 

The other fundamentals while selecting a startup to add to UpScalio’s portfolio include companies with revenues upwards of $1 Mn and their profitability — EBITDA margin of at least 15%.

The Thrasio-styled roll-up startup recently raised $42.5 Mn in its Series A round led by Presight Capital, Heliad Equity Partners, MPGI, 468 Capital, Whiteboard Capital, OfBusiness founders, Innoven Capital, and Alteria Capital.

The Thrasio-Style Run Up Among Indian Startups

India’s ecommerce market space is one of the fastest-growing in India and is expected to grow 32%, touching a $200 Bn mark by 2026, according to Inc42 analysis. The emergence of direct-to-customer (D2C), the Thrasio model of consolidation and growth are further bolstering the country’s ecommerce space.

However, UpScalio isn’t the first such adopter of the ecommerce roll-up model in India. Some popular names include Supam Maheshwari’s FirstCry’s GlobalBees, Rishi Vasudev’s GOAT Brand Labs, Utsav Agarwal & Pulkir Chhabra’s Evenflow, Bhavana Suresh’s 10Club, FJ Labs-backed Powerhouse91 and India’s fastest unicorn Mensa Brands.

Recently, GlobalBees turned unicorn, after raising $111.5 Mn in December last year. In fact, Thrasio, the US-based company that started the trend of roll-up ecommerce, too has earmarked $500 Mn for a foray into the Indian market. It has already completed its first local acquisition of Lifelong Online which offers products across the kitchen, grooming and lifestyle categories.

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