Stellaris Ventures Leads $4 Mn Series A funding Round In Baby Care Startup MamaEarth

Gurugram-based mother and baby care startup MamaEarth has raised $4 Mn (INR 27.5 Cr) in a Series A round of funding. The investment was led by early-stage technology-focussed venture capital (VC) firm Stellaris Ventures.

FMCG player Marico’s Mariwala family office — managed by Rishabh Mariwala — and other existing angel investors, including Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal and Bengaluru-based investor Fireside Ventures, also participated in this funding round.

Varun Alagh, the co-founder of MamaEarth, confirmed the development to Inc42. Further details are yet to be received. The startup has reportedly been valued at around $12.4-$13.2 Mn (INR 90-95 Cr) in the funding round.

MamaEarth plans to use the raised capital to expand its team, invest further in product research and development, strengthen its offline retail presence, and scale up direct consumer reach while building brand awareness.

Founded in 2016 by Varun Alagh and Ghazal Alagh, MamaEarth is an on online retailer specialising in baby and toddler products. It offers almost 50 natural, toxin-free products for mother and baby personal care, including innovative products such as protective repellents and oral care products. The brand claims that all products go through multiple testing processes, including clinical dermatology testing in Europe, to make sure they are of high quality and match global standards.

The startup earlier raised $1 Mn in a funding round led by VC firm Fireside Ventures and a few other investors to launch ‘Traditional Recipes’, a new range of wellness solutions, including herbal teas and supplements, for mothers.

MamaEarth: Baby Steps Towards Success

MamaEarth currently claimed to have crossed an annualised revenue run rate of over $2 Mn (INR 15 Cr) as of August and is looking to cross the $13.8 Mn (INR 100 Cr) revenue run rate mark by 2021.

Also, it is currently selling over 50K units per month across all categories.

Here are some of the other future plans of MamaEarth:

• The startup is looking to grow its sales volume by 3x to 15,000 units every month over the next year
• It expects the offline channel to contribute about 50% of its revenues in three years
• It plans to expand its product portfolio and launch about 20 products across categories that are ‘easy to use and apply’ for mothers and babies, apart from hair detangler products for babies

Growing Child Care Startups In India

With increased family incomes and awareness, thanks to active sharing of parental experiences and product advertisements on social media channels, young parents are focussed than ever on providing the best of care to their children. This has opened up the floodgates of opportunities for startups in the child care segment and attracted significant investment from leading investors as well.

Recently, Mumbai-based online parenting platform Babychakra raised an undisclosed amount of fresh funding from a group of senior corporate leads. The startup plans to use the funds to further strengthen its region- and language-specific content and communities and to deepen personalisation on the product platform.

Earlier, in March, parenting social network startup Healofy raised $1 Mn in a seed funding round from Omidyar Network. The company planned to use the latest funding to hire talent in leadership positions across product, technology, and data science, and for exploring other ventures.

MamaEarth competes with other major players in the industry including Gurugram-based The Moms Co, which sells pregnancy care and baby products online; Mumbai-based Marico, which sells products in global beauty and wellness space; and Lotus Herbals, among others.

According to a Technavio report, the Indian baby care market is expected to grow at an annual rate of over 17% in terms of revenues during the 2014- 2019 period to reach over $31 billion, from $14 Bn.