GlobalBees has joined the Unicorn club as the New Delhi headquarters firm to scale its Thrasio- like the house of Brands.
Prem Invest, the investment firm controlled by Indian tycoon Azim Premji, led the nine-month-old startup’s Series B financing round, the young firm disclosed in a regulatory filing.
Steadview Capital and existing investors ━ SoftBank and FirstCry also participated in the $110 million equity round. In addition to this, Trifecta Capital invested $30 million as debt in the new round.
GlobalBees, founded by Nitin Agarwal, acquires and partners with digitally native brands in different categories like beauty, home and kitchen, personal care, food and nutrition, and sports and lifestyle with a revenue rate of $1 million to $20 million.
GlobalBees helps these firms scale and sell to the marketplace and through other channels in India and overseas of the South India Market.
“We have created and engaged with brands in the past and realized that most of these brands reach a scale after which it becomes too difficult to scale them,” Nitin stated in an interview.
“Supam Maheshwari, founder of FirstCry, and I have been talking about this for several years and trying to find ways to disrupt in the market. We believe that there is an opportunity to create a new house of brands, digital-native.
Agarwal also said that GlobalBees was looking to acquire around three dozen brands. Some Indian news channels reported GlobalBees’s talks to raise A round at the Unicorn club in October, said then that GlobalBees was in a different stage of the conversation to close deals with at least 15 brands.
Similar to Thrasio, many of these firms are trying to acquire brands that sell midrange to high-end products. In fact, some of the common categories are underrated that even Amazon and other leading e-commerce firms have not promoted them through their private label ecosystem.
With over 800 brands, India is rapidly becoming a fast-growing market for direct-to-consumer brands.