SUGAR Cosmetics raises $50 million in a round led by L Catterton, with a $500 million valuation

SUGAR Cosmetics, a direct-to-consumer business, has secured $50 million in a Series D round led by L Catterton's Asia fund. According to sources close to the situation, the fundraise was valued at around $500 million. The round was also attended by A91 Partners, Elevation Capital, and India Quotient.

This comes at a time when investment rounds are taking longer to conclude, and companies are closing non-core verticals, rationalising marketing and advertising spends, and putting hiring on hold.

Now this cosmetics company has raised a total of $85.5 million.

Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh co-founded the D2C business, which sells lipsticks, eyeliners, face and eye brushes, and has lately moved into the skincare market, selling moisturisers and sheet masks. Moneycontrol previously stated that the company's current annualised revenue is around Rs 320-350 crore, or roughly Rs 27-30 crore in net revenue every month.

The company has been expanding its offline presence as well, with over 100 owned locations around the country.

"We intend to strengthen and extend our three fundamental pillars: distribution, product, and community." Our retail footprint will be strengthened through improving the retail marketing and visual merchandising experience, as well as our product line and distribution."We also plan to strengthen our omnichannel strategy by expanding our distribution channels in India and beyond, as well as building a stronger basis on our direct-to-consumer platforms," said Vineeta Singh, co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics.

"We'll also be concentrating on producing high-quality material to continue to educate and engage our SUGAR community across all platforms — digital and otherwise." We'll also form strategic alliances with like-minded people, companies, and events. While the path to becoming one of India's Top 3 Makeup brands has been incredible, Singh stated, "I do envision employing more than 10,000 women and going public."

Mamaearth, Nykaa, Wow Skin Science, and MyGlamm, among others, compete with SUGAR, which was created in 2012. While the funding scene has cooled, direct-to-consumer (D2C) was one of the hottest investment concepts last year. Over $2 billion was raised by these brands, which are very popular among millennials and Generation Z.

This is L Catterton's first venture in India, after last year's appointment of Anjana Sasidharan from Sequoia Capital India as head of investments in India and Southeast Asia.

L Catterton was founded in 2016 when Catterton, a private equity firm, partnered with LVMH, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, and its billionaire chairman Bernard Arnault.