Bengaluru – July 26, 2021: Driven by a mission to help D2C Brands and their passionate founders thrive, G.O.A.T Brand Labs (“G.O.A.T.”) intends to partner with digitally native brands by investing in them and providing them with a plug and play platform to accelerate their growth. The founders of G.O.A.T, Rishi Vasudev and Rameswar Misra, bring with them decades of expertise in this space. G.O.A.T has completed its Series A funding of approx. $36 million which includes Equity and Debt. This round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Flipkart Ventures (the early stage venture fund of Flipkart), Mayfield, Nordstar & Better Capital. Some of the prominent angel investors who are also part of this round are Virender Gupta of DailyHunt, Sujit Kumar (Udaan), Dr. Ranjan Pai (Manipal Group), Suhail Sameer of BharatPe, Neeraj Goenka (Texport) & Alex Kuruvilla (MD Conde Nast India).
Rishi has vast experience of building and scaling fashion and lifestyle brands (both online and offline) in his previous roles as Flipkart’s Group Head – Fashion (Flipkart and Myntra) and as CEO of iconic brands and retailers – Calvin Klein India, Lifestyle Departmental Store & Home Centre. Rameswar, who was co-founder of Menswear brand Turms and previously an SVP at VOONIK, has first-hand experience in creating, launching and scaling brands in the D2C space. The G.O.A.T founding team comprises senior leaders with deep expertise in Brand building, Digital marketing, Fashion design, M&A and Operations at scale.
Sharing his views on the future of G.O.A.T., Rishi Vasudev, co-founder G.O.A.T. said, “G.O.A.T stands for Greatest of All Time. Through this venture, we are bringing together passionate entrepreneurs, their D2C brands, marquee investors, industry experts and a dynamic team, who believe in the philosophy of partnering and nurturing. We want these brands to have access to the best resources so that they scale rapidly to become G.O.A.T s”. He added that G.O.A.T will fuel exponential growth of D2C brands across all channels – marketplaces, brand’s e-commerce platforms, offline retail, and global markets too, by providing them a tech enabled platform for end-to-end integration replete with deep digital marketing expertise. G.O.A.T’s integrated platform will help the brands maintain high efficiency and gain from economies of scale.
“The potential of the D2C market in India will only continue to grow and G.O.A.T. Brand Labs is well positioned to effectively tap this, while helping brands scale. We are excited to partner with Rishi, Rameswar and team, as they build their tech-enabled platform and make the best resources available to native brands” said Scott Shleifer, Partner, Tiger Global.
Speaking about Flipkart Ventures investment in G.O.A.T., Ravi Iyer, Senior Vice President and Head, Corporate Development, Flipkart, said, “At Flipkart, we are consistently focused on identifying opportunities and building new partnerships that benefit the ecosystem at large. Our investment in G.O.A.T. Brand Labs is aligned to this intent, as we aim to work with early stage startups that have the potential to address emerging business and consumer requirements leveraging the power of technology. The leadership team at G.O.A.T. have deep experience in this segment and we look forward to the transformation they will make in the D2C segment.”
“With the digital acceleration of commerce in India, we believe there will be a large opportunity for brand aggregators to partner with home-grown D2C brands and help them scale exponentially. We are excited to partner with Rishi and team as they build out the centralised operating ecosystem to help digital brands scale across multiple platforms in India and globally.” said Nikhil Khattau, MD, Mayfield India.
“We are excited to partner with D2C brands and their passionate founders. The post pandemic world will see a boom in e-commerce penetration in India and with this comes an opportunity for bigger and more organized brands and sellers. G.O.A.T aims to be a reliable partner for these brands and sellers by providing them tech-driven solutions to scale quickly,” said Rameswar Misra, cofounder.
G.O.A.T is in advanced discussions with at least 10 brands for acquisition and would be announcing the same shortly. They are looking at brands in fashion, beauty, personal care, and Home & Kitchen in the first phase.
