VLCC to acquire men's grooming brand Ustraa: Report
According to details, post merger VLCC will make further investments to accelerate the growth of Ustraa, whose 67 per cent sales come from online channel.
PremiumIndia's premium beauty and skincare brand VLCC on 9 June announced the acquisition of Happily Unmarried Marketing Private Limited (Ustraa) through a combination of secondary buy-out and share swap.
According to details, postmerger, VLCC will make further investments to accelerate the growth of Ustraa, whose 67 percent of sales come from online channels.
The brand founded by Rahul Anand and Rajat Tuli in 2015 has 85 SKUs across fragrances, hair care, and face and beard care and had 2.2mn customers on their app. Ustraa is backed by marquee investors including InfoEdge, 360 One (formerly IIFL Ventures), and Wipro.
Vikas Gupta, CEO of, VLCC said, "We are impressed with Ustraa's leading position in the fast-growing men's grooming market, especially the D2C channel. Both founders have a deep understanding of the online D2C ecosystem including digital marketing, e-commerce, and a fast product innovation cycle which has enabled them to scale Ustraa in a short period. This acquisition marks VLCC's foray into the men's grooming market and we aim to accelerate Ustraa's growth journey by leveraging VLCC's pan-India offline distribution. In parallel, VLCC's existing product business will benefit from Ustraa's tech and digital expertise to scale up in new age commerce."
"VLCC represents a perfect strategic partner to help us broaden our customer reach, especially in offline retail. VLCC's strong management, well supported by Carlyle globally, brings the resources and sector expertise that can enable us to significantly grow our brand further and expand the range of products. We believe our combined expertise in brand building, sales, and marketing and distribution will create faster growth for both brands and we are excited to embark on the journey forward as part of the VLCC family," said Rahul Anand and Rajat Tuli, Founders of Ustraa.
Sanjeev Bikhchandani of InfoEdge added, "At InfoEdge, we have built leading consumer businesses like Naukri and 99acres and have invested in companies like Zomato and Policybazaar where we have been part of their scale-up journey since inception. We are bullish about the synergies that can be realized in this VLCC-Ustraa merger for the platform to become a leading consumer business in the beauty and personal care space and look forward to working closely with the management team and Carlyle post-merger. VLCC's focused strategy to scale up their products business using digital channels and high-quality product innovation is in sync with Ustraa's founding principles."
Trilegal and KPMG advised VLCC on the acquisition. EY acted as the exclusive financial advisor to HUMPL and its investors.
With agency inputs.
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