Goldman Sachs acquires Rs 60 Cr worth Purplle’s stake in secondary buyout

Global investment banking major Goldman Sachs has bought out stakes of several early-stage angel investors in the hybrid cosmetic product platform, Purplle. Former Fidelity executives Abhinav Sinha and Anirudh Gopalkrishnan have exited the company with a whopping 40X return.

Goldman Sachs that led the $30 million Series C financing round in December last year has bought the share from the duo and others worth Rs 60 crore while former and existing employees also sold Rs 12 crore worth holding to the Belgium-based Verlinvest. 

Rahul Dash, one of the co-founders of Purplle, confirmed the development to Entrackr. However, he declined to comment on whether it was a complete or partial buyout. “We won't be able to comment on this as it's a private transaction,” he said. 

As per the TOI report, Goldman Sachs has valued Purplle in the tune of Rs 1,100 crore.

According to a separate regulatory filing, Purplle had allotted 2,301 stock options to its employees in January this year, and few of them are also likely to offload their stocks in the latest secondary transaction.

When asked whether these employees would also be a part of the latest secondary buyout, Dash declined to comment. However, he added, “Some of our old employees, along with current ones, have sold their full/part of their vested ESOPs in the transaction.”

Founded by Manish Taneja, Suyash Katyayani, and Dash, the eight-year-old Purplle is one of the very few startups in the Indian ecosystem which didn’t raise much capital. In fact, it didn’t raise anything for three before the Goldman Sachs’ round last year. 

Instead of buying growth at any cost, the company believed in growing steadily with a sharp focus on unity economics. During FY19, the company was very close to turning profitable. While its revenue recorded 3X growth in FY19 to Rs 101.48 crore from Rs 31.35 crore in FY18, during the period, it managed to control its losses by over 70% to Rs 4.07 crore.

So far, the company has raised over $40 million in funds across three institutional rounds. Besides Blume and IvyCap who were early backers of the company, Purplle also raised a $6 million Series B round from JSW in July 2016.