IDG Ventures India Leads $14M Series B in E-Commerce Company Brainbees

IDG Ventures India, along with SAIF Partners, has invested $14 million (Rs 68 crore) into the e-commerce firm Brainbees Solutions, which runs the baby-care portal First Cry and the newer site GoodLife, which sells beauty and wellness products. SAIF had invested $4 million in Brainbees last May. Brainbees was founded in late 2010.

PRESS RELEASE:

IDG Ventures India led a $14 million Series B investment into Brainbees Solutions Pvt Ltd., which owns the FirstCry.com and GoodLife.com brands, India’s #1 babycare and #1 beauty e-commerce sites respectively.

SAIF Partners, the existing investor in Brainbees participated equally in the round, having earlier invested $4 million in the company in May 2011. Manik Arora from IDG Ventures India joins Ravi Adusumalli & Mukul Arora from SAIF Partners on the board of the company.

Pune-based Brainbees started operations in late 2010 and operates FirstCry.com, the #1 e-commerce platform in India for kids, babycare and maternity care. It offers products for moms, babies and kids from leading national & international brands. Its product catalogue includes infant accessories (diapers, toiletries, baby food, stroller, furniture), apparel, footwear, books, toys etc. for children up to the age of 15 years. Brainbees also has the largest selection of health, wellness and beauty products under the brand name GoodLife.com. Brainbees prides itself on widest assortment of brands and products as well as exceptional customer service.

Brainbees was founded by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha. The founding team of Brainbees previously worked together at Brainvisa Technologies, which was led by Supam Maheshwari and had a successful exit.

“The FirstCry and GoodLife brands have achieved clear leadership in e-commerce for both baby and beauty products. We will continue this dominance and will also extend this position into new categories. We are delighted to have IDG Ventures as an investor given their successful track-record with Internet companies globally. We plan to use the funds to focus on providing customer delight by extending our product selection, shipping from multiple warehouses and investing to enhance the overall customer shopping experience,” says Supam Maheshwari, Founder and CEO of Brainbees.

Brainbees currently has one warehouse in Pune from where it ships products to over 2,000 towns and cities across India. Brainbees has a collection of over 25,000 SKUs across FirstCry.com and GoodLife.com with brands such as Kimberly Clark, L’Oreal, Mattel, Revlon, Funskool and Disney. The investment will be utilized for marketing, adding new business categories and brands, and expanding warehousing space. In addition, Brainbees will accelerate its growth in existing categories, recruit employees for expanding the supply chain and overall customer experience.

Manik Arora, Founder and Managing Director of IDG Ventures India Advisors, said, “IDG is delighted to invest in Brainbees Solutions, the #1 online company in both the baby and beauty products market. This is over a $10 billion market, which is well placed to move online. Supam and Amitava are seasoned entrepreneurial leaders who have clearly demonstrated their ability to build and scale-up a world-class organization. As early investors in Babycenter.com, the first global success story in this segment, IDG Ventures looks forward to partnering with Brainbees to rapidly extend the company’s leadership position.”

Ravi Adusumalli, Managing Partner of SAIF Partners said, “As early investors in Brainbees, we are happy to see Supam and his team grow the company at a tremendous pace. This second round of funding validates their market dominance. As active investors in Internet companies in Asia, we believe that Brainbees has all the makings of a successful company. It is sustaining its rapid growth trajectory and expanding its customer base while maintaining one of the highest repeat customer metrics in the industry.”