There's buzz across the market that HUL is looking to acquire Minimalist for ₹3,000 crores. While I personally feel the valuation is a bit nutso (new favourite word), it's heartening to see India Inc embrace new age companies who are creating differentiators and appealing to broader consumer bases than the traditional. Some great examples across the past decade include: 1. Dr. Vaidya's by RPSG Group: Built by the phenomenal Trisha Rajani Vaidya and Arjun Vaidya, in 2019. By no means the biggest exit, it was one of India's first D2C exits, opening up the pathway for other India Incs to follow suit. 2. Flipkart by Walmart: India's largest startup acquisition and the World's largest E-commerce acquisition at $16 billion, this deal was Walmart's commitment to what's expected to the biggest growth market for the next decade and a chance to incorporate a lot of Flipkart's processes and in-house technology into Walmart's global e-comm efforts 3. CaratLane - A TATA Product & Tata 1mg: Clubbing the two, since Tata has been an active player across M&A, the teams here beautifully showcased a synergistic (ONLY time this word should be used) acquisition as well as a market-entry one, with Tanishq's supply chain being leveraged in the jewellery space, while 1mg giving Tatas a foray into pharmaceutical retail. 4. Reliance Industries Limited and Haptik, Addverb, Fynd (Shopsense Retail Technologies Ltd.), Karkinos Healthcare, JioSaavn and more, Reliance has emerged the most supportive of corporates, acquiring startups to help expand their reach, services and bolster the ecosystem they are building. Kudos to Aakrit Vaish and the omnipresent Manoj Modi. Global companies have long had their eye on India, with the likes of Meta acquiring Little Eye Labs all the way back in 2014, with Google following suit in 2017 (acquiring Halli Labs) and 2018 (acquiring Where is my Train), Rephrase.ai being snapped up by Adobe and more #venturecapital #startups #acquisition #funding #sale
if it's not in our portfolio, the valuation always looks nutso, because all we see is numbers and the story is lost :)
As a retailer, i can tell for sure that Minimalist has bad service across the trade, non existant repeat/ satisfied customers and crapy products
Exciting times ahead Avik Ashar Incredible to see India Inc. embracing innovation. These acquisitions highlight how startups are transforming industries.
In addition to the above, ITC's acquisition of Yoga Bar serves as another example to the growing list.
This is a fantastic analysis of the evolving landscape of acquisitions in India. The trend of established companies acquiring innovative startups is indeed a testament to the dynamic nature of the market and the increasing value placed on technological advancements and new business models.
HUL is already an investor in Minimalist. Same is the case with Brillare The Man company where Emami is an investor. Large FMCG companies are already invested in the D2C game.
Exciting to see India embracing fresh ideas.
Minimalist got a great deal tbh! Quite high valuation considering that it operates in an overly competitive environment
Insightful! Avik Ashar Time for Indian founders to build global companies from India🌟
Software Engineer - HPC, ML & AI | HPC-AI Leadership Organization Asia-Pacific Committee Member | Cranfield | IITB | VIT | part time VC for fun
2moMinimalist product gets bought because of marketing, but for a simple reason their products don't work and people switch or complain to their dermatologists - dermatologists' products that work have higher concentration of active ingredients since they are pharmaceutical products, while these are cosmetic products which are not allowed that high conc. so they kinda market a false dream, which is not achievable with their products. Will HUL actually make money with this or if it is being bought to die out remains to be seen.