Pep Technologies Pvt Ltd, which owns caffeine-based skin and hair care brand mCaffeine has raised Rs 240 crore, from Paragon Partners.
Many investors including Sharrp Ventures, Singularity Growth Opportunities Fund and existing investors Amicus Capital Partners and RPSG Capital Ventures also participated in the round.
With this fundraise, the startup is now valued atRs 1,000 crore.
The company plans to use the funds to grow its offline presence to 25,000 outlets from its existing 5,000, expand its sales team, and acquire at least two beauty brands.
Mumbai-based personal care brand mCaffeine was founded in 2015 by IIT alumni Tarun Sharma, Vikas Lachhwani, Vaishali Gupta, Mohit Jain, and Saurabh Singhal, mCaffeine offers caffeinated personal care products for face, hair, body, and lips.
“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”, said, Tarun Sharma, CEO and co-founder of mCaffeine.
The D2C brand has also expanded to three other countries with over 55 products. It sells its products through its website and other online e-commerce marketplaces like Flipkart, Myntra, and Amazon.
“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, stock keeping units, customer retention, and brand recall,” said Sumeet Nindrajog, senior partner, Paragon Partners.
The company recently roped in Bollywood actress Alia Bhatt as its brand ambassador. To date, personal care brand Mcaffeine has raised a total of $40 million in three funding rounds.
