Personal care brand mCaffeine raises ₹240 cr in Series C

Pep Technologies Pvt. Ltd., which owns caffeine-infused personal care brand, mCaffeine, has raised ₹240 crore in its Series C round of funding, led by Paragon Partners, valuing the start-up ₹1,000 crore. Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund, Sharrp Ventures, besides existing investors Amicus Capital Partners and RPSG Capital Ventures, also participated in the funding round.

Tarun Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder, mCaffeine told BusinessLine that the funds will be used to scale up R&D capabilities, grow offline distribution and brand awareness nationally. The funds will also be used to expand to international geographies such as the GCC markets, besides funding potential acquisitions, he added.

“Within the past few months, the offline stores’ contribution has grown to 10 per cent with the brand being sold through 5,000 stores. We will strengthen the brand’s presence in general trade and modern trade stores, besides shop-n-shop formats in department stores. We will expand our presence across 25,000 stores by the end of the year. In the next five years, we expect offline stores to contribute 40-45 per cent to our revenues in India,” Sharma explained.

Tarun Sharma, CEO and Co-Founder, mCaffeine

Launched in 2016, the single ingredient D2C beauty brand has sold over 10 million products and offers a curated range of 55 caffeine-infused products in skin care, body care, hair care and lip care. “ Over the last four years we have maintained 100 per cent year-on-year growth and are at an annualised revenue rate (ARR) of ₹250 crore. We believe by the end of the next financial year we will be at an ARR of ₹500 crore,” Sharma stated.

Talking about the company’s inorganic growth plans, he said, “We believe the playbook that we have used to build mCaffeine can be leveraged to build more brands. We will now look at going beyond the caffeine ingredients proposition to either buy or build other brands in spaces such as cosmetics,” he said

The brand, which recently roped in Alia Bhatt as its brand ambassador, has raised a total of $40 million across three funding rounds and said it is profitable on every unit sold. In the last funding round, the brand raised ₹42 crore in the Series B round led by Amicus Capital Partners.

Sumeet Nindrajog, Co-Founder and Senior Partner, Paragon Partners added: “This is Paragon’s first investment in the personal care sector as the company evolves from a leading Indian digital-first brand to a full-fledged global omnichannel brand. We have been tracking the Indian beauty and personal care industry for the last 24 months and found that mCaffeine clearly stands out from its peers in terms of new product development capabilities, product efficacy, revenue density , customer retention and brand recall.”