Nat Habit Pockets $10.2 Mn To Boost Skincare Product Offerings, Grow Offline

Naturohabit Private Ltd, which owns direct-to-consumer (D2C) beauty and wellness care brand Nat Habit, has raised $10.2 Mn (INR 85 Cr) as a part of its Series B funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments.

The round also saw participation from existing investor Fireside Ventures, with Amazon India Fund, Mirabilis Investment Trust and Sharrp Ventures joining the cap table.

The New Delhi-based startup will use the fresh capital for research and development, product diversification, brand building, offline expansion and hiring talent.

Founded in 2019 by Swagatika Das and Gaurav Agarwal, Nat Habit offers organic skincare products such as hair oils, masks, scrubs and face creams.

The startup said that it will use around $2 Mn from the latest fundraise to facilitate exits to its early-stage backers, offering returns of 4.5-5 times their initial investment within a four-year period.

In April last year, Nat Habit raised $4 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Fireside Ventures.

The startup currently claims to have an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of INR 82 Cr and aims over 4X growth to INR 350 Cr ARR in the next two years.

India’s D2C market, which is likely to reach a size of $100 Bn by 2025, has grown exponentially in the last few years. Several factors including the Covid pandemic, higher internet penetration, growth of digital infrastructure and rise in the number of millennials, among others, have shored up the D2C brands. In fact, the space has been gaining traction from a lot of investors for the past few years.

For instance, last month, Innovist, the parent entity of D2C consumer brands Bare Anatomy and Chemist at Play, raised $7 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Amazon Smbhav Venture Fund.

Several other existing investors, including 72 Ventures, the family office of Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar and former KKR India head Sanjay Nayar, Accel India and Sauce.vc, also participated in the round.

Home to more than 190 Mn digital shoppers, India has the world’s third-largest online shopping base in the world. It is this burgeoning ecosystem that the new-age D2C brands aim to capitalise on, on the back of the growing appetite of Indian consumers for innovation and waning loyalty towards traditional players, as per Inc42’s report.

Of this, fashion and clothing startups have the highest potential and are expected to grow to $43.2 Bn by 2025, according to an Inc42 report.

Some of the emerging D2C brands including Mamaearth, CaratLane and Nua merely took a couple of years to reach INR 100 Cr revenue mark.

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