Nestasia, an online home decor and lifestyle brand, has raised $4 million in a Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners.
A group of more than 60 high net worth individuals, including entrepreneurs and industry professionals such as MamaEarth’s Varun Alagh, Delhivery’s Sahil Barua and Deutsche India’s Dilip Khandelwal, also participated in the round.
“We plan to deploy the money in technology, improving product lines and in house manufacturing capabilities, among other things,” Co-Founder Anurag Agrawal told Moneycontrol in an interaction.
“This is a Rs 100,000-crore segment and we want to reach over 10 million households by 2025,” he said.
Nestasia was founded in 2019 by Aditi Murarka Agrawal and Anurag with the aim to provide a range of products with choices across modern as well as traditional designs.
The company manufactures and brings products from across India and South-East Asia which are mostly made up of clay, metal, wood and marble.
Nestasia has over 6,000 products across six categories on its website, including kitchen and dining, decor, garden and bath and storage. It claims to have completed 100,000 orders and has a customer base of over 50,000 across seven countries.
With new products every week, the brand is also looking to increase its range to 10,000 products by June 2022, further expanding into other categories like cookware and soft furnishings.
Besides capital, Stellaris will also be helping Nestasia get e-commerce partners in their network and hire for key positions.
Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands have become immensely popular among investors in the last one year. It saw investments worth $2 billion across 105 deals this year.
The segment had suffered a dip last year when it raised $735 million, while in 2019 (pre-COVID), the mop-up neared $1.5 billion through 120 deals, according to data from Venture Intelligence.
The top five deals of this year in the space include Firstcry, Lenskart, Licious, Rebel Foods and MyGlamm through which MyGlamm, Licious and Rebel Foods also turned unicorns.
The D2C segment saw huge growth with increasing online adoption in the post-COVID world. The momentum is expected to continue with these brands expanding their reach in smaller towns and cities.
[“source=moneycontrol”]
