Amazon-backed Good Glamm Group has recently announced multiple acquisitions of popular content and D2C brands including ScoopWhoop, BabyChakra and The Moms Co. On Tuesday, it broke into the unicorn club at a valuation of $1.2 billion, raising $150 million in Series D led by Prosus Ventures and Warburg Pincus among others.

In an interview with BusinessLine, Darpan Sanghvi, Founder and Group CEO, and Co-Founders Priyanka Gill (also founded POPxo and Plixxo) and Naiyya Saggi (also founded BabyChakra) discuss their M&A strategy, IPO plans and their soon-to-be-announced single-access Good Point Loyalty Programme.

You have been choosing some really fascinating brands, both in the digital content space and personal care. Take us through My Glamm’s investment rationale and deal structure?

Darpan: We have completed deals worth $270 million, while two of them have been announced, four other deals are at the final signing stages and will be announced by December end. The deal structure for us typically is 30-40 per cent in cash, about 30 per cent in stock and the remaining 30 per cent in future earn-outs based on the performance of the brand in the next couple of years. The latest fundraise is not for acquisitions, we have already done most of the bigger acquisitions in the categories we wanted.

What goes behind the brand hunting process?

Darpan: We wanted to be in skincare, haircare, hygiene, mom and baby, naturals and find brands in these segments, clocking revenue of between ₹50-100 crore. These brands have great repeat numbers in customers and were seeing more sales on marketplaces, but their own website revenue was low. They could easily propel with our content-to-commerce strategy and typically wouldn’t have a presence offline, so we could instantly run with them and add them to our channels. Further, we only picked one brand in each category so that we can focus on them and nurture them.

You have recently acquired ScoopWhoop which also has a non-fiction vertical Unscripted. Will you be continuing the vertical and what’s the content plan there?

Darpan : We are not in the business of news. For us, it’s just the entertainment and lifestyle segments. The non-fiction vertical was carved out, before we acquired ScoopWhoop. We will be working with the channel’s other IPs like ScoopWhoop and OkTested.

What will be your key focus areas in the business over the next three to five years?

Darpan : We want to have market leadership in the beauty and personal care segments. Our goal is to be among the top two brands and have significant market share in each of these categories. Ultimately, we want to become the ‘digital FMCG conglomerate’ that is coming out of India.

Most of the D2C brands selling and getting popular on the market places are working closely with you. Some are even co-creating products with the company. How do you convince them to join you?

Naiyya: These brands are very strong in marketplaces and they have found very good product-market fit. What they are looking to leverage from the Good Glamm Group is our three value engines. Our network of 30,000 offline points of sale being one of them. For a brand to build this singlehandedly will take years, but now they can quickly piggy back on Good Glamm’s network and start selling across the country. That’s one of the reasons why I signed up for this.

Secondly, since we are a D2C brand we are mostly over-invested in the data science, data analytics part of the business. We can lead a consumer to choose our content and serendipitously urge them to make a transaction on one of our platforms. The conversion rates are very high, along with a strong CRM and prediction engine.

Thirdly, the cost of building a brand reduces for them by riding on our engine, and the brand grows exponentially.

Are there any innovations in the pipeline to boost product offerings and tech stack?

Darpan: The most exciting thing we are working on right now is bringing all our assets together, be it our content assets, creators or beauty and personal care products; and offer a common loyalty reward programme across them. So you can read on POPxo to get points and then use it to buy something from the Moms Co or My Glamm.

Priyanka: The Good Points Loyalty Programme is something we are working on. Across the Good Glamm Group brands, we call all our users ‘G3 users’. As a G3 user, you get single access to our loyalty programme. You can be a customer for Moms Co, Baby Chakra, My Glamm, POPxo or any other portfolio brand, and you become a G3 user for us. In our loyalty programme you are not only getting points for shopping but also for every other form of interaction you are having with one of our brands. You can watch content on POPxo and ScoopWhoop or write a review on My Glamm — for any interaction you will get rewarded. Then you can redeem the points for buying products and even use it for things like gifting a special birthday wish to your friend from their favourite influencer.

It is a single point access through the loyalty programme built across the group’s brands and customers. This is the next big thing you’ll be hearing from us.

My Glamm was eyeing an IPO by 2023 and expected a valuation of $10 billion by then. Any update on the plan?

Darpan: We are all excited for the journey of becoming a decacorn and today we start with that journey by entering the unicorn club. It is still the first day for us. We definitely want to get listed, but that is still two and a half years away. As a consumer brand we believe in being cash generating and we should be at a good scale to get rewarded on the Indian stock market.

Thrasio model has been the ‘in’ sector to fund lately in India and we are awaiting announcements from several such Indian start-ups on turning a unicorn. How do you view this opportunity and do you consider yourself a Thrasio-like start-up?

Darpan: Not at all. Thrasio is acquiring 50 companies and we are just looking at six to 10 brands maximum. In every segment we are bringing one brand and trying to make it a market leader. Thrasio has worked very well in the US and I am sure Indian Thrasio-like companies would do the same.

We are a personal care brand. And as a company, the brands you acquire need to be very DNA-focused. You can’t have 10 DNAs. We are building a digital FMCG conglomerate for the future, and that involves acquiring a few start-ups.

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