Published: 1/28/2021
Good morning, it's Thursday and the slow news week continues. We do have a couple of smallish rounds today with a well known DNVB raising some capital and some activity in the ever-hot fintech space.
➡️ British multinational consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser has led a Rs 45 Cr investment in the popular Bombay Shaving Co, which makes grooming products for men (largely). A majority of the investment was done through primary capital with a small secondary component to let early backers and employees cash out.
➡️ The company was launched in 2016 and already counts the likes of Sixth Sense, Fireside Ventures and Colgate Palmolive as its investors and has raised $9.5M over a couple of rounds. The company clocked a revenue run rate of Rs 95 Cr as of last December and expects to close out this year at a run rate of Rs 150 Cr (note- I don't think this means the company expects to make revenues of 150 Cr in the calendar year of 2021 but hit a monthly revenue of Rs 12.5 Cr in Dec 2021).
➡️ There wasn't much talk about what the company was valued at but I'd be curious to hear why the company chose to raise more capital through equity, though I assume a large consumer goods company like Reckitt might also strategic help other than just capital.
➡️ The company's model has likely been inspired by the American company, Dollar Shave Club, which was acquired by Unilever in 2016 for $1B. Closer to home, we also had Marico acquiring Beardo (for an undisclosed valuation) so it'll be interesting to see where Bombay Shaving Co goes from here- does it continue being an independent brand for a while or do one of the consumer group conglomerates acquire it?
2. http://bit.ly/2NxBjgL: GrowFix raises $2M from Zerodha and others
➡️ GrowFIx, a digital investment platform for Securitized Debt Instruments (SDIs), has raised $2M from the likes of Zerodha's fintech fund Rainmatter, Better Capital and a couple of angels including Kunal Shah, Praveen Jadhav, Nitin Gupta and Deepak Abbott (basically the who's who of Indian Fintech)
➡️ The company, that is barely a year old, lets HNIs and retail investors invest in asset-backed fixed income products with better returns than fixed deposits. One of the company's founder talks about how FD and debt mutual funds have had their return rates dropped considerably and the company can give better returns that those financial products while not being as volatile as equities.
➡️ The company's first product, GrowFix Gold, had a pool of gold-backed loans where retail investors could invest and get a 11% fixed interest rate. And just in a couple of weeks, 50% of the asset had been subscribed.
➡️ Zerodha's Nithin Kamath also mentions that GrowFix's products are easy to understand and can provide a stepping stone for first-time investors to enter the capital markets in a slightly risk-averse manner. And with millions of new Indians retail investors entering the capital markets in 2020 and beyond, it'll be fascinating to see how GrowFix introduces the next generation of investors to investing.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/mengxilu/status/1354485569988923395
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