Third-party e-comm marketplace aggregator Evenflow acquires Rusabl

Evenflow Brands Tech Pvt Ltd, a marketplace aggregator of third-party sellers on e-commerce platforms has acquired Rusabl, a three-year-old e-commerce digital-first brand in the sustainable category.

Rusabl is a brand that sells eco-friendly daily utility goods such as bamboo toothbrushes and steel straws, amongst others. Evenflow has acquired Rusabl at an upfront amount basis EBITDA multiple valuations, it said.

With this, Rusabl’s founder, Mayank Jain, has joined the start-up as a full-time employee to build the sustainable category through more product launches.

Founded by former Uber executive Utsav Agarwal in 2021, Evenflow aggregates third-party sellers on e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon. The Thrasio style e-commerce roll-up acquires online marketplace sellers in a range of $2,00,000 to $1.5 million per brand.

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The Chennai-based Rusabl is its second acquisition within a month. Last week, the start-up had acquired BabyPro, an online brand in the baby proofing category.

“We loved the products Rusabl offers, and Mayank has put in a lot of thought in not just the products, but in packaging and branding it too,” said Evenflow’s Co-founder and CEO, Utsav Agarwal.

“We want to build daily sustainability as a category within Evenflow and establish Rusabl as an affordable, sustainable option in the daily utility space, cutting across categories like lifestyle, home and kitchen, personal care, office commodities, etc. Based on the ongoing trends, eco-friendly products already make a $5.6 billion market in India,” said Agarwal.

“Evenflow felt like an obvious choice to partner with – given their belief in the brand’s vision and the team they’ve managed to build. We are confident and excited to see Rusabl become huge with an execution-first approach across the team at Evenflow,” Jain added.

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Evenflow is heavily focused on third-party sellers on marketplaces and acquires them at EBITDA multiples, not revenue multiples. It has been acquiring third-party e-commerce sellers with attractive product portfolios and aims to establish them as solid brands across multiple categories in e-commerce.

The sheer width of sellers across different categories is massive and is only growing year on year, the company said. In 2020, over 7,00,000 sellers signed up on Amazon India, making it the highest among any Amazon marketplace globally. Also, globally, third-party sellers on Amazon crossed $300 billion in GMV & are expected to reach $650 billion in GMV by 2025.

“While they have good product portfolios, they do not have the expertise and capital to scale, where e-commerce aggregators become enablers,” it said.