Good Glamm Group Acquires Vidooly, Winkl; Spins Off A Creator Focussed Entity With $26.8 Mn Investment

In a bid to strengthen its position as a house of brands, powered by a content-to-commerce strategy, Good Glamm Group has announced the stealth mode acquisitions of influencer marketing platform Winkl and video analytics startup Vidooly. 

Founded in 2017 by Rahul Singh and Nikhil Kumar, Bengaluru-based Winkl helps brands and advertisers run fully automated and data-driven influencer marketing campaigns. The startup hosts over 33K active influencers with a reach of 150 Mn people in India. 

Vidooly, on the other hand, is an online video analytics platform that produces real-time actionable insights. It helps brands and content creators make marketing decisions and content strategies. The startup was launched in 2014 by Subrat Kar, Nishant Radia and Ajay Mishra, and is backed by the Alibaba Group, Bessemer Venture Partners, Times Group, among others.

As a part of boosting its content strategy, the Good Glamm Group has spun off and consolidated four of its acquisitions (Plixxo, MissMalini, Winkl and Vidooly) into a creator economy-focused brand — the Good Creator Co. It has also pumped INR 200 Cr in the new venture, to scale it from present 250K+ creators to 1 Mn+ by CY22.

According to the company statement, Good Creator Co will count MissMalini founders Malini Agarwal, Nowshad Rizwanullah and Mike Melli, Winkl and Vidooly founders as its cofounders.

Founded in 2017, D2C beauty and personal care startup MyGlamm consolidated itself into the Good Glamm Group in September 2021. The idea was to consolidate its position as a ‘Digital House of Brands’ and focus on the 3Cs of scaling — Community, Commerce and Content. 

On the community and content part, Good Glamm Group houses brands like POPxo and ScoopWhoop, which have a combined audience of over 188 Mn readers and followers. Recently-acquired parenting platform Baby Chakra also hosts a community of 20 Mn+ mothers and 10K+ doctors.

Its D2C brands’ portfolio includes in-house brands such as MyGlamm and acquisitions and investments of/in feminine hygiene care brand Sirona and mother & babycare brand The Moms Co.

Good Glamm Group Taps Into The Creator-Led Marketing Revolution

Speaking on the recent acquisitions and strategy, Good Glamm Group cofounder Priyanka Gill stated, “These [creator-focussed companies] were assets that we felt would really add value to the Group. Even when POPxo and MyGlamm came together, we could see the impact on sales at MyGlamm via the creator network at POPxo’s Plixxo. Thus, we began to see if other creator assets and platforms could solve two main problems of the influencer economy — technology and data-driven insights.”

The spin-off Good Creator Co (GCC) will be an independent entity from the Good Glamm Group. It combines the capabilities of the four entities (Plixxo, MissMalini, Winkl and Vidooly) to create full-stack, tech-based, data-driven solutions to the creator ecosystem — both influencer and brands.

While Plixxo and Winkl are influencer marketing platforms with a combined influencer base of 250K+, reaching 70+ Mn users every month, Vidooly is a content and creator analytics startup and MissMalini is one of the first celebrity and macro-influencers talent management and creative agency and it reaches over 60 Mn users monthly. 

Explaining how the GCC would work, the cofounders stated that the current influencer economy is quite unorganised. Brands run campaigns over tools like WhatsApp, and it is hard for them to find the right influencer. 

Good Creator Co, an app as well as a web platform, will combine their collective influencer reach, with brands- as well as creator-focussed marketing tools. The companies will not only connect brands to creators but also build full ranking campaigns, and data-rich insights. The company will deal with nano creators (<500 followers) as well as big Bollywood stars.

“Currently, the ecosystem is only following bits of influencer marketing, and data alone doesn’t do the job. It’s the journey of translating data into information into insights into knowledge. This partnership will address a lot of pain points in the online video and influencer marketing space, related to finding the right influencer-fit, campaign performance and KPIs,” Vidooly’s Nishant Radia said.

The Aim? To Become A Powerhouse Of India’s Creator Ecosystem

“Currently, there are many small shops when it comes to managing creators. New creators do not know how to navigate and become a creator, get brand deals, create authentic content and not fall into traps such as ‘buying followers’. And for brands, finding the right influencers is a tough job,” MissMalini’s Malini Sharma said in the interaction.

The spin-off will allow the brand to focus on academy-style features such as short videos, masterclasses, tutorials. It aims to build the working module of training influencers on developing content, picking trends, expanding reach, among other things by mid-2022.

Unlike a simple aggregator, GCC will also focus on building a community-style interactive platform, where influencers can also approach each other for collaborations. It also plans to acquire and invest in content-focussed brands.

GCC will also bank on Good Glamm Group’s in-house content platforms like POPxo, ScoopWhoop, where brands will not only reach consumers via influencers but also through media and celebrity relationships since the founders have been a part of the show business for a long time.

Currently, the company’s creator ecosystem has relied heavily on inbound interest from brands. Moving forward, Good Creator Co plans to invest a considerable sum from INR 200 Cr to build a robust sales pipeline, and pitch to brands — small and big, across all niches (sports, FMCD, FMCG, fashion and lifestyle, etc).

Pre-spin-off, the company had an ARR of INR 75 Cr for FY22. By December 2022, it eyes a revenue run rate of INR 250 Cr, onboarding over 1 Mn influencers and reaching 150 Mn viewers.

The Competition Landscape In Beauty & Wellness Focussed ‘House Of Brand’ Segment

India’s beauty and personal care market has boomed on the back of the D2C rush. The industry is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.23% between 2020 and 2025, estimated to be worth $8 Bn. 

The rapid growth of the D2C beauty brands coincides with the rise of consolidations happening in the personal care segment with a ‘Thrasio-style’ rollups trend. 

Most recently, in a move similar to Good Glamm Group, Ghazal and Varun Alagh-led D2C unicorn Mamaearth acquired women-focussed content platform Momspresso and its influencer engagement platform Momspresso MyMoney. 

Previously, Nykaa has also outlined its plans to turn the company into an umbrella brand for lifestyle products, rather than become a multi-brand retailer. In October 2021, Thrasio-style unicorn GlobalBees also acquired millennial focussed skincare Prolixr.

Chasing the beauty D2C ecosystem, Purplle (valued at close to $450 Mn), Mumbai-based SUGAR Cosmetics, Plum, WOW Skin Science and others have given traditional beauty brands such as Revlon and Lotus a run for their money.

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Correction Note: 5th January 2021 | 10:00 AM

The earlier version of the headline had an incorrect value of the investment, the same has been fixed to show the right value.