SUGAR Cosmetics raises $50 million led by L Catterton, valuation close to $500 million

The D2C brand co-founded by husband-wife duo Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh sells lipsticks, eyeliners, face and eye brushes, and recently expanded into the skincare segment, selling moisturisers and sheet masks

Direct-to-customer brand SUGAR Cosmetics has raised $50 million in Series D fundraise led by the Asia fund of L Catterton. The fundraise was valued close to $500 million, according to people in the know. A91 Partners, Elevation Capital and India Quotient also participated in the round. 

This comes at a time when funding rounds are taking longer to close, and companies have also resorted to shutting down non-core verticals, rationalising marketing and advertising spends, and gone on hiring freeze. 

Earlier in March, Moneycontrol reported that SUGAR Cosmetics is in talks to raise over $50 million at a valuation of $500 million, which is a 5x jump in a year. 

Altogether, the cosmetics brand has now raised $85.5 million. 

The D2C brand co-founded by husband-wife duo Kaushik Mukherjee and Vineeta Singh sells lipsticks, eyeliners, face and eye brushes, and recently expanded into the skincare segment, selling moisturisers and sheet masks. Moneycontrol earlier reported that it currently has an annualised revenue of about Rs 320-350 crore, or about Rs 27-30 crore of net revenue a month. 

The brand has also been growing its offline presence and now has over 100 owned stores across the country.

"We plan on building and expanding our core pillars – distribution, product & community. Strengthening our retail footprint by enhancing the retail marketing and visual merchandising experience, our product line, and our product distribution is going to be prime. We also intend to go stronger on our omnichannel approach by simultaneously growing our distribution channels in India and beyond, along with creating an even stronger base on our D2C platforms," said Vineeta Singh, co-founder of SUGAR Cosmetics.

"We also will be focusing at creating solid content to keep educating and engaging our SUGAR community across all platforms – digital and otherwise. We will also be strategically collaborating with like-minded personalities, IPs and events. While this journey of making it as one of the Top 3 Makeup brands in India has been phenomenal, I do envision employing more than 10,000 women and public listing," added Singh.

SUGAR which was founded in 2012, competes with Mamaearth, Nykaa, Wow Skin Science, and MyGlamm among others. While the funding scene has slowed down, D2C were one of the hottest themes for investments last year. These brands which are quite popular among the millennials and GenZ, raised over $2 billion. 

Notably, this is L Catterton’s first deal in India, after it hired Anjana Sasidharan from Sequoia Capital India to head investments in India and Southeast Asia last year.

L Catterton was created in 2016, when PE firm Catterton partnered with Louis Vuitton owner LVMH and its billionaire chairman Bernard Arnault.