Goat Brand Labs has raised $50 million in fresh funding as the Indian direct-to-consumer brand aggregator looks to acquire more premium brands and help them scale globally.
Winter Capital, Vivriti Capital, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts and Oxyzo financed the Bengaluru-headquartered startup’s Series A funding, which includes some capital that has been raised as debt. The new funding follows Goat raising $36 million funding from scores of investors including Tiger Global, Flipkart Ventures, Mayfield and Better Capital last year. Most of these investors participated in the new round.
Goat Brand Labs — founded by Rishi Vasudev, a former Flipkart executive, and Rameswar Misra, who previously started menswear brand Turms and served as senior vice president of women-focused apparel e-commerce marketplace Voonik — operates in the same space as Thrasio, the Boston-based startup widely credited with the success of this model.
Goat Brand acquires lifestyle brands and helps them scale globally. These brands typically have “good consumer connect, Instagram following, direct sales with their own websites or platforms such as Shopify, Myntra and Ajio,” Vasudev told TechCrunch.
Goat acquires brands that are usually clocking an annual revenue in the range of $2 million to $10 million, he said. The startup says its team brings operational expertise in the lifestyle category and helps them grow two to three times in a year while also turning them profitable.
Goat Brand Labs team (Image credits: Goat)
In the past one year of its operation, it has acquired 15 brands including celebrity-styled Label Life, fashion jewellery Voylla, Indian wear trueBrowns & Abhishti, children wear Frangipani and beauty and skin care platform Neemli and Nutriglow.
The startup plans to deploy the fresh funds to acquire several more premium brands. It is in advanced discussions with 12 brands currently, Goat Brand Labs said.
“Our journey of taking Indian D2C Brands global has just started. We are fortunate to partner with great founders and continue to learn and build capabilities in this fast changing space,” said Vasudev. “I welcome our new investors and the strong support from our existing ones in this funding round. We will continue to acquire high potential D2C brands across the Lifestyle segments and scale them to huge outcomes.”
Scores of entrepreneurs are attempting to find better e-commerce models across the globe. Many investors believe that Amazons and Flipkarts of the world have laid the railroads for digital commerce, but smarter and more profitable businesses can be built atop of them. Other startups operating in the space in India include Mensa, Global Bees, EvenFlow Brands, 10club, and Powerhouse91.