IvyCap Ventures, amongst the earliest early-stage venture capital (VC) firms in the nation, has delivered a whopping 22x return to its investors via a partial exit from on line beauty retailer Purplle. IvyCap sold its fund 1 stake of 30 per cent, bought with a $2 million investment in 2015, at an exit worth of $45 million, creating it amongst the largest returns ever delivered for a rupee investor in the startup ecosystem. “We have retained our stake from fund 2. In fact, we would not have exited fund 1 but we wanted to give returns to our investors. Rupee investors in venture capital have not seen returns like this before,” Vikram Gupta, Founder and Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures told TheSpuzz Online.
IvyCap had raised its 1st fund of Rs 240 crore in 2013 and invested about $2.8 million from its second fund of $550 million raised in 2017. “The exit is a big boost to the domestic VC ecosystem and will give a lot of confidence to invest in this asset class. It is a defining moment for the industry. The whole idea is to clear the way for the future fundraise and to give confidence to investors,” added Gupta. The exit has enabled IvyCap to produce 1.35X of its complete fund 1 worth of Rs 240 crore.
“IvyCap Ventures has been instrumental in fuelling Purplle’s expansion, being our Series A investor. Even with a Covid year, we have delivered more than 90 per cent GMV CAGR for the last three years,” mentioned Manish Taneja, Co-founder and CEO, Purplle.com. The partial exit by Purplle to IvyCap has come along with the investment of $45 million from Sequoia Capital India, and current investors Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, and JSW Ventures.
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Purplle was launched in 2012 and at present has more than 6 million customers and 3 million month-to-month active guests. It claims to have more than 700 brands with practically 50,000 items accessible on its site and app. The enterprise had raised $30 million in Series C funding at finish of 2019 from Goldman Sachs and Verlinvest. It at present competes with unicorn startup Nykaa, Sugar Cosmetics, MyGlamm, and horizontal marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, and style marketplace Myntra. “The market for online beauty and personal care is huge and multiple players can survive simultaneously. The combination works very effectively between vertical and horizontal players,” mentioned Gupta. IvyCap manages Rs 1,500 crore across 3 funds.
The beauty and private care industry is most likely to have $26.85 billion in income in 2021 and develop at a CAGR of 8.51 per cent till 2025, according to Statista. The biggest segment in the industry is private care with a industry volume of $12.26 billion in 2021. Globally, the US is the largest industry with $82.26 billion in 2021.