Firstcry — an online platform which sells baby products, is reportedly in talks with various investors to raise about ₹650 crore ($100 million) in its new funding round.
Temasek Holdings — Singapore’s State investment company, is among the investors approached by the company for this new funding round. The funding round could also witness secondary transactions to purchase stock holdings from existing investors of the company.
As per the reports, Brainbees Solutions, which owns and operates Firstcry, is seeking to be valued at $400-500 million with this new fundraising activity. When the company raised its last funding round in October last year, it was valued at around $300-350 million.
Firstcry is currently the leader in the online baby products retail market. Recently, the company acquired its close rival Babyoye, which was a part of Mahindra Retail, for around ₹362 crore.
It also raised funding of about ₹226 crore from Mahindra Group, Adveq, IDG Ventures India, SAIF Partners, New Enterprise Asso ciates and Vertex Ventures. The total funding raised by the company so far stands at around ₹820 crore.
Singapore-based Temasek Holdings is among the active investors in the Indian startup ecosystem. The VC firm has invested in online marketplace Snapdeal, automobile classified portal CarTrade, and online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar, among others.
According to a report from Euromonitor published earlier this year, India’s baby and child-specific product market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8 percent, reaching ₹2,940 crore by 2021.