News Update
Sugar cosmetics’s deal marks LVMH
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ByStartupStory | March 1, 2022
Sugar Cosmetics, co-founded by husband-and-wife team Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh, the latter of whom was recently a’shark’ on the viral series Shark Tank India, is in talks to raise over $50 million at a valuation of around $500 million, according to people familiar with the situation who asked to remain anonymous.
The transaction, as well as Sugar’s soaring valuation, signal a surge in consumption as well as funding for new-age beauty and personal care firms that begin selling online and hope to utilise social media word-of-mouth, online trends, and a democratised internet to grow quickly and expand offline afterwards.
With the COVID-19 pandemic boosting internet adoption, these so-called direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses collected $2 billion in capital last year, a tenfold increase year over year.
Sugar’s awareness may be boosted further by CEO Vineeta Singh’s newfound prominence who over 500,000 Instagram and Twitter followers, with over 80% of them following her in the last three months, whereas Sugar has around 2 million followers, mostly on Instagram.
Heart Up My Sleeve, Booz Scooters, momo-maker BluePine Foods, energy drink NOCD, and COSiQ Cosmetic are among Singh’s show investments.
The transaction would also be the first in India for new investor L Catterton, who hired Anjana Sasidharan from Sequoia Capital India to manage investments in India and Southeast Asia last year.
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