Unicorns
This week (Oct 23-29 2021) has to be declared the ‘week of the skin/beauty with so many deals. But before we get there, we will cover the customary unicorns minted in the week. Acko became the 34th unicorn for the year with a 1911cr raise from General Atlantic, Multiple PE, Tiger, Alkeon and others at a valuation of 8243cr.
The week also saw Groww raising a massive 1885cr at 22500cr valuation from IconIQ, Sequoia Ribbit, YC, Tiger and others. This comes at a time when India saw historic high quarterly new demat accounts being opened. Familiar investors in the above deals like Tiger, Alkeon and Lightspeed also pumped in 300cr, led by DST and others, into Neobank Zolve.
Week of Skin
The “week of skin” deals saw GlobalBees from the Firstcry stable acquiring Prolixr, continuing its acquisitions after the andMe and The Better Home brands earlier.
While Lotus Herbals acquired 32% stake in Fixderma for its range of prescription and OTC cosmetics. Lotus along with Inflection Point and others also pumped in a smaller amount into Vanity Wagon, a beauty marketplace. Interesting side note is that a consortium of HNIs participated in the deal, showing the broad interest in the sector.
Purplle raised a 561cr round led by Kedaara and participation from existing investors, for its beauty platform at a valuation of 4488cr. We think the triggers could be a simple brand roll-up strategy or a potential Thrasio for India or possibly Nykaa being subscribed fully on day 1 of its IPO offer.
Full stack farmer
We had earlier noted that there is momentum in the making of the ‘Full-stack farmer’. This week provided some solid evidence for the same. First was the mega-deal in DeHaat, raising 862cr from Sofina, Light rock, Temasek, and other existing investors. Meanwhile, Stellapps raised 135cr from Nutreco and other existing investors and Gramophone raised 75cr from Z3Partners and other existing investors. Together the full-stack farmer deals provided an impetus to a range of input services, advisory and financial services, marketplace linkages, traceability, and other digital services to the farmer.
Other deals
The logistics sector also saw deals in both moving things and moving people sub-sectors. With Porter raising 750cr for its expansion and Chalo acquiring Amazon’s Shuttl, providing an opportunity to foray into ticketing/ops.
Learning platforms whether its digitizing the classroom or training full-stack developers also maintained the momentum this week. Megadeal in the sector was Teachmint raising 585cr from Rocketship VC, Vulcan Capital and others for developing its digital classroom. Masai School saw interest from several hyperactive operators like CRED’s Kunal Shah, Pine Lab’s Amrish Rau, and PayTM’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma looking to cast their net on the full-stack developers from Tier 2/3 cities.
Similarly high profile angels pumped in 135cr into LoveLocal, a hyper-local e-commerce platform, as part of its Pre-Series B. In addition to Vulcan there were commits from Klarna founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s Flat Capital, Nami Zarringhalam, co-founder of Truecaller, Sriram Krishnan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. A lot of angels wanting a share of the India story is now a given.
Sunshine hospitals’ majority stake was acquired by Krishna Institute of Medical Sciences for 363cr, while Marengo Asia Healthcare invested 450cr into CIMS hospital in a bid to expand its partnerships in med-tech. Within the sector BlueSemi has raised 517cr from private alternative investment group GEM Global Yield LLC in a run up to its major launch of a consumer health tech product and listing. While Dr. Lal Path Labs acquired Suburban Diagnostics for at least a 1000cr valuation, showing that the diagnostic space is gearing for consolidation or at least major expansion by incumbents.
Summary
From a deal stage perspective, it was evenly spread across early and late stage companies. Bangalore led the deals by volume followed by Mumbai and NCR region. The week was VC/strategic investor heavy with more deals than other investor types. The week was also saw 15 acquisitions.
That’s it for the week folks, see you next week with our Diwali deal fireworks.