E-commerce roll startup Mense Brands announced on Tuesday that it has raised $135 Mn in a Series B round led by Falcon Edge Capital’s Alpha Wave Ventures. Existing investors Accel partners, Northwest Venture Partners, Tiger Global and Prosus Ventures also contributed to the funding round.
The barely six month old company said that it has raised fund at over $1Bn, which technically makes it India’s newest and also the youngest startup of India. It has now dwarfed the blue collar job networking platform Apna to India’s youngest and fastest unicorn.
Overall, it is the 37th unicorn of the ongoing year.
Apart from achieving the unicorn status, Mense Brands also claimed it has achieved profitability merely within six months of its inception. However, the company refused to divulge the numbers.
The company said that it will use the funds to acquire and invest in D2C brands across e-commerce platforms, hiring across new verticals and ramp up technology infrastructure.
Mensa Brands is inspired from successful American E-commerce roll-up startup Tharsio. In fact, Tharsio’s success has spawned number of Indian startups that are today directly competing with Mensa Brands.
Mensa Brands partners and acquires promising digital brands that are sold on Amazon and Flipkart. It acquires brands across the vertical including fashion, apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care and food. After acquiring them, Mensa Brands seek to scale and grow these brands exponentially.
India’s new youngest unicorn claims that it has so far partnered with 12 brands, most of which are supposedly growing at 100% growth year-on-year basis.
Mensa Brands directly competes with the likes of GlobalBees, Goat Brand Labs, Evenflow and 10Club. Notably, last week Evenflow announced that it has acquired Chennai based online Sports brand Xtrim.