New Delhi, Mar 29 (PTI) Pep Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns caffeine-infused D2C personal care brand mCaffeine, on Tuesday announced raising Rs 240 crore in Series C round of funding.
The Series C round was led by Paragon Partners valuing the start-up at Rs 1,000 crore, Pep Technologies said in a statement.
Besides, Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund, Sharrp Ventures and existing investors Amicus Capital Partners and RPSG Capital Ventures also participated in the funding.
“This marks a significant surge in valuation for mCaffeine from its previous round that took place in September 2020, where it had raised Rs 42 crore in Series B led by Amicus Capital Partners,” it said.
Commenting on the development, mCaffeine CEO and Co-Founder Tarun Sharma said the fund will help the company scale up its R&D capabilities, strengthen the brand and distribution.
“We are deeply excited by this fundraise, as it will enable us to scale up our R&D capabilities while we strengthen our brand awareness nationally, and fortify our marketing and distribution efforts (both online and offline) across geographies,” he said.
Till date, mCaffeine has raised a total of USD 40 million (around Rs 304.27 crore) across three funding rounds, the statement added.
“… as we are cognizant of how fast our global customer base is expanding. Anticipating the growing needs of a worldwide audience requires us to augment our innovation capacity and fasten new product development while ensuring environmental stewardship so that we can create offerings that are universal in appeal to ‘Bharat’ as much as ‘NYC’,” he said.
Moreover, to enable to achieve this goal, mCaffeine also plans to “acquire small brands from the beauty industry” in national and international markets, Sharma added.
“Mapping this valuation on an international scale, mCaffeine has cemented faster and more phenomenal growth metrics when compared to any other funded, single ingredient D2C beauty brand across the globe,” it said.
mCaffeine, currently with 55 products in the portfolio, is present in four major categories – face care, hair care, body care and lip care.
It has plans to further launch 15-20 products in the next one year. It has already sold upwards of 10 million products till date, mCaffeine said.
mCaffeine products are available on all major shopping portals namely – Amazon, Nykaa, Flipkart and sells through its e-commerce portal. They are also present in more than 5,000 offline stores across India and have expanded to three countries. PTI KRH MR
