Vanity Wagon raises $2 mn led by Agility Ventures Partners, Lotus Herbals

The round, which now values the beauty products marketplace at $8 million, also saw participation from Inflection Point Ventures, Venture Catalysts, and HNIs.

The Delhi-based startup will use the funds to invest in brand building, expanding its private label portfolio, growing offline retail, and ploughing money into technology, marketing and sales-driven strategies.

Vanity Wagon had raised $1 million in a 2021 seed funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures. The round also saw participation from Venture Catalysts, Lotus Herbals, existing investors Agility Ventures and a consortium of HNIs (advised by Instarto).

The e-commerce platform sells brands such as Arata, Face Rituals, Enn, Sadhev, The Momo’s Co., Lotus Organics, among several others. The company has on-boarded over 350 brands on the portal, 15% of these are international labels.

Launched in 2018, Vanity Wagon was co-founded by Naina Ruhail, Prateek Ruhail, and Sahil Shrestha.

“Vanity Wagon deploys the latest technologies in assembling the largest clean beauty community and we are building a holistic company with several revenue streams around beauty and also have the largest team in the clean beauty marketplace segment. Vanity Wagon aims to be an ₹500 crore company in the next two years,” the company said in a statement.

To be sure, India’s beauty and personal care is expected to reach ₹2 trillion by 2025; meanwhile the online beauty and personal care market is growing at an even faster pace clocking at CAGR of 60% between 2016 and 2025, according to a 2021 report by Motilal Oswal Financial Services Limited.

Growth will be driven by a higher propensity to shop online owing to increased internet and smartphone penetration as well as more convenient payment infrastructure (UPI), apart from a large millennial and Gen-Z population base with aspirations and growing disposable incomes, according to estimates by Motilal Oswal Financial Services. Nykaa is estimated to control 35% of the online beauty and personal care market.

“Our vision is to build a sustainable and a legacy brand in the beauty segment which will only be strengthened by this investment. Furthermore, our strategy to go omnichannel, co-own more clean beauty brands, and expand internationally is what a part of this investment will be deployed in,” said Naina Ruhail, Director and Co-CEO, Vanity Wagon.

Vanity Wagon allows investors an opportunity to be a part of one of the fastest-growing industries i.e. beauty, said Dhianu Das, co-founder, Agility Ventures.

“The industry has seen several unicorns and also several companies that have outgrown the market constantly, and still, the market continues to grow. This signifies a strong future for not only beauty but for commerce as a whole,” said Das.