Join Ventures, which runs house of brands like IGP, Interflora and Masqa, on Tuesday said it has secured Series A funding of $10 million (around Rs 75 crore) from DSG Consumer Partners, Rajiv Dadlani Group, 9Unicorns and Venture Catalysts.
The platform plans to use the fundraise for dark stores network expansion, revving up technology and logistics as well as scaling up.
Join Ventures owns and operates a portfolio of digital-first direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands in fresh, food, home and fashion categories. The company, which has a presence across 25 India and Singapore locations, claims it is currently racking up over 3 million orders per year.
“All trends show that consumers are bullish on celebrations landscape that is defined by the 140 million online buyers who are currently generating more than 4 billion occasion led searches in India, and we aim to capture a large share of this underserved market with our superior ‘design to delivery’ consumer experience, robust supply chain and proprietary distribution network,” said Tarun Joshi, Founder and CEO of Join Ventures.
In November, Join Ventures forayed into the luxury foods segment with Masqa brand by investing over $7 million.
According to Avendus Capital’s report, the D2C food and beverage market stood at $5.5 billion in 2020 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 40% to touch $15 billion by 2025. India is one of the largest retail markets in the world and is projected to surpass $1.7 trillion by 2025, it added.
2021 has seen homegrown D2C startup brands draw more than $250 million from venture capital (VC) investors in the first half of 2021, nearly as much as the total sum invested in such businesses through 2020.
Investor appetite for D2C brands, whetted last year by pandemic tailwinds, has accelerated across categories, the statement said.
Hariharan Premkumar, Head of India at DSG Consumer Partners said: “We have tracked IGP’s impressive growth journey over three years. We believe that Tarun and the IGP team have built the best full-stack platform for online gifting in the market.
This comprises in-house supply chain, tech and data capabilities to deliver a personalized gifting experience at a specific delivery time slot. The online penetration in gifting is expected to increase significantly as observed in other categories.”
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