Vanity Wagon raises around $2 million in pre-series A funding round

Clean beauty marketplace Vanity Wagon has raised around $2 million in pre-series A funding round at a valuation of $8 million. Co-led by Agility Ventures Partners and Lotus Herbals, the pre-series A funding round also saw participation from Inflection Point Ventures, Venture Catalysts, and notable HNIs. Startup Street spoke to co-founder and CEO Prateek Ruhail about the clean beauty space and the road ahead at Vanity Wagon.

Homegrown direct-to-consumer beauty and personal care brands in India are expanding their presence across cities with hair and skincare brands such as Wow Skin Science betting big on the D2C opportunity in the country. Wow Skin Sciences which raised $48 million in June this year is backed by investors like GIC and ChrysCapital. It has also appointed actors like Kartik Aryan, Rashmika Mandanna, Kareen Kapoor Khan and Bhumi Pednekar as its brand ambassadors. The company which aims to hit the 1,000 crore mark in revenue in 24 months, is now investing heavily in its offline presence and growing its brand name. Startup Street spoke to the company's co-founder, Manish Chowdhary to find out more about the company's game plan to stay ahead in the beauty and personal care space.

Online retail platforms have seen a robust 27 percent year-on-year growth, clocking a sale of $5.7 billion this festive sale season as per a report by Redseer Strategy Consultants. The festive sale week 1 included sale events conducted by all online retail platforms between the 22nd and 30th of September. For platforms that did not run a sale during any of these dates, the report had considered business-as-usual order volumes. Startup Street spoke to Sanjay Kothari, Associate Partner at Redseer Strategy Consultant to talk about the key highlights of the report.