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IvyCap buys stake in beauty and grooming e-commerce platform

Purplle.com to deploy funds to expand marketing efforts and fulfilment capacity

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IvyCap Ventures, an Indian venture capital fund, has announced picking up an undisclosed percentage of stake in Purplle.com, an e-commerce platform for beauty and grooming in India. The money, being invested as part of Series A round of funding, will be primarily utilised by Purplle for aggressively growing its marketing efforts and fulfilment capacity.

Elaborating the rationale, Vikram Gupta, founder and managing partner, IvyCap Ventures, said that several e-commerce verticals remain relatively untapped in India. "Niche players with rich content and in-built intelligent discovery features are going to be the next wave of value creation, especially in the Indian context.

"Against this backdrop, beauty and wellness is of particular interest, as it is a fast growing sector with inherent loyalty characteristics far beyond many other verticals," said Gupta, who will join the board of Manash Lifestyle Pvt Ltd (owning company of Purplle.com) on behalf of IvyCap Ventures.

Other investments of IvyCap Ventures include entities like Reuters Market Light, Aujas Networks, Vinculum, FieldEz Solutions, E-Shakti and Leixir Labs.

Founded in 2011, Purplle.com has been an early mover in the online beauty space. It raised angel funding from marquee Indian angel investor groups, and has grown at a robust rate through 2014. With new funding in place, it is looking to aggressively grow sales through its e-commerce platform and expand beyond e-commerce to salon listings, discovery, and related rich content and intelligent features.

Calling it an exciting phase of growth, Manish Taneja, co-founder and CEO, Purplle.com, said, "We have clearly demonstrated cost efficient scale up in our beauty products market place business and are making rapid inroads into the beauty services market. With this round of funding, we are confident we will establish ourselves as India's top destination for beauty," he said.

Beauty and wellness e-commerce, industry experts feel, is one of the largest potential market segments that is yet to see a dominant player emerge in India. Internationally beauty and wellness has been fertile grounds for the creation of several billion dollar start-ups in recent years – Jumei.com (China), Sephora, Birchbox being a few.

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