Online baby products retailer FirstCry plans to raise over $100 Mn

FirstCry, an online baby products retailer, is in talks with multiple investors to raise over $100 Mn (Rs 665.27 crore), according to the ET report.

The company is in discussion with Singapore’s state investment firm Temasek Holdings to raise the above-mentioned sum at a valuation of $400-500 million.

In its last funding round in October 2016, The Pune-based company was valued at $300-350 million.

It last raised $34 million (Rs 226 crore then) from the Mahindra Group, Switzerland-based private equity fund Adveq, Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan and existing investors including IDG Ventures India.

At that point, it had acquired Mahindra and Mahindra’s baby care business BabyOye in a cash-and-stock deal worth Rs 362.1 crore ($54.3 million).

With this move, FirstCry is in direct competition with retail giants like Flipkart and Amazon India but has been sidelined by investors due to its business model, which mainly targets on customer specific products instead of the wide range of different products.

According to a Euromonitor report published in May, India’s infant product market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8%, reaching Rs 2,940 crore by 2021. In this category, recently, the company acquired its close rival Babyoye, which was a part of Mahindra Retail, for around ₹362 crore.

Temasek already is indirectly associated with the Firstcry with venture capital subsidiary Vertex Venture Holdings, and venture debt arm Innoven Capital. The Singapore government-backed investment company is one of the most active investors in India’s startup ecosystem. The firm, which manages assets worth about $275 billion globally, has backed online marketplace Snapdeal, automobile classified portal CarTrade, and online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, among other companies.

Earlier this year, Tata Sons’ chairman emeritus Ratan Tata invested in FirstCry. During the same time the company was reportedly in talks with parenting platform mycity4kids for an acquisition.

In the mom-and-baby care space, Hopscotch, which has raised about $26 million from many high profile investors likes of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus, is another firm that is competition with FirstCry. Mumbai-based parenting and baby care startup Kidsstoppress.com had also raised an undisclosed amount last year