GlobalBees, an investment venture firm, announced that it has raised $150 million in a Series A round led by FirstCry and some of its investors, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners.
With this round, Softbank’s Vikas Agnihotri, Lightspeed’s Harsha Kumar, Premji Invest’s Atul Gupta, Chiratae Ventures’ Sudhir Sethi, and Chrys Capital’s Kshitij Sheth will join the GlobalBees board of directors.
“GlobalBees’ mission is to unleash the potential of Indian entrepreneurs‘ product innovation and to strategically partner with them in order to help them realise the full potential of their brand and products,” said Nitin Agarwal, Co-Founder and CEO GlobalBees.
He added: “Apart from the capital, GlobalBees brings strategic capabilities in Marketing & Growth, Technology, Distribution, Sourcing, Branding, Warehousing, Logistics, Research & Development, Product Development, and Operations—all of which are critical for rapidly scaling brands in the digital space.”
Supam Maheshwari and Nitin Agarwal, co-founders of FirstCry, stated that they are extremely happy to have a stellar list of investors on their cap table and are looking to partner with founders who have built brands around unique consumer insights. “The funds raised will play a crucial role in helping us scale these brands globally,” said Nitin.
“India is at the cusp of a D2C revolution with estimated market size of $200 billion in the next 5 years. Indian brands have shown great promise in recent years, and we believe that GlobalBees is building great assets to accelerate the growth of digitally native brands in the country,” Vikas Agnihotri, Operating Partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, said.
GlobalBees, according to Sudhir Sethi, founder and chairman of Chiratae Ventures India, provides a unique technology platform for consolidating and massively scaling D2C brands in India and around the world. “Chiratae is thrilled to be a GlobalBees partner and investor,” Sethi said.
