Capital Crazy Digs Gold in Indian Beauty Market

In October, according to incomplete statistics of China Cosmetics, there were 16 investment and financing/mergers and acquisitions in the beauty personal care industry. Among them, 13 were financing and 3 were mergers and acquisitions, with the overall number slightly higher than that of last month.

From the perspective of the fields involved, there are three cases of skin care, four cases of color makeup, four cases of channels, three cases of daily care products, and two cases of raw materials.

Most of the investment this month was concentrated on early projects, and the largest amount of financing was obtained by Social Bella, an Indonesian beauty e-commerce company. The Indian beauty capital market was quite active this month, and Vanity Wagon, Mother Sparsh and Heart Of Shades were all Indian brands and platforms. Among them, Heart Of Shade is the first web3 cosmetics brand in India.

In October, the field of synthetic biology was very busy. Not only did Juzi Biotech pass the listing hearing, but also two companies got financing - Weimingshiguang and Suohua. It is worth mentioning that these two companies are new companies just established last year.

Synthetic biology is undoubtedly one of the most popular tracks this year. It is not only the direction of domestic and foreign beauty groups, but also the target favored by the primary market.

In early August, the Ziyue Fund set up by Shiseido in China invested in Jiangsu Chuangjian Medical, which focuses on recombinant collagen raw materials. This investment became its first investment.

L'Oreal also set up a fund in China to focus on the upstream of the industry. Before the establishment of the fund, L'Oreal also cooperated with domestic synthetic biology companies through the Cosmetic Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge to jointly carry out relevant research.

Huaxi Bio also positioned synthetic biology as the top priority of the Group's development in 2022. After completing the platform construction and laboratory preparation related to synthetic biology in March, it is still trying to synthesize recombinant human collagen in biological mode, in addition to the raw materials that have been put into production, such as Exelon and Y-aminobutyric acid.

In addition, enterprises such as Pelaya and Bettany have also deployed in this field, and Juzi Biology and Jinbo Biology, two companies focusing on recombinant collagen, have also reached the threshold of listing.

Not only is it a giant, but this field is also attracting new players, and capital is also coming.

According to the data of SynbioBeta, in 2021, the financing of global synthetic biology start-ups will be as high as 18 billion dollars, and the amount of financing in one year will be close to the total amount of all investments obtained in the previous 12 years (from 2009 to 2020). So far this year, more than 20 synthetic biology companies have obtained financing, half of which are beauty and medical beauty related companies.

Weiming Shiguang and Suohua, which obtained financing this month, are two very young companies, both founded in 2021.

In particular, Weimingshiguang has been very popular in the capital market since its establishment. The company, which has been established only 17 months ago, has accumulated more than 150 million yuan of investment. Its investors include CITIC Capital, Zhenge Fund and other well-known institutions.

The founding team of this company are all doctors of biotechnology and chemical engineering from Peking University and Tsinghua University. Bioactive material R&D providers positioned in the beauty personal care field, mainly serving the medical beauty and skin care fields.

At present, this company has established cooperation with many famous brands, such as Huaxi Biology, Zhuben, Hercules, etc. The two new products that were launched one by one before, "essence of breathing for the first time" and "little bottle of non staining jasmine", are in cooperation with Unnamed Pickup.

Not long ago, Sanjiv Mehta, CEO of Unilever India, said that the sales contributed by the Indian subsidiary had accounted for about 10.7% of the total sales of Unilever Group, and would surpass the United States as the largest market for Unilever sales. In terms of sales volume, India is already Unilever's largest market.

This news has drawn attention to the rise of the Indian beauty market.

According to the estimate made by the data platform Statista before the outbreak in 2019, it is estimated that the Indian beauty market will exceed 230 billion yuan by 2023, with an annual compound growth rate of 8.1%. This figure is almost twice that of the United States, the largest market for cosmetics. The compound annual growth rate of the United States in 2020-2023 is expected to be 4.4%.

According to the report of Kesai Consulting, the growth drivers of Indian beauty market include: favorable population structure and increase of disposable income, increase of salaried female labor force, increase of Internet penetration, increase of male beauty, undeveloped rural market, growing bride beauty segment, and rise of strong inclusiveness and beauty care.

The huge market prospect has made the capital focus on this market. Among the 13 financing events this month, Indian beauty brands accounted for 3.

Among them, Vanity Wagon is a beauty platform. At present, more than 350 brands have settled in, 15% of which are international brands. Its latest financing will be used for brand building, expanding its private brand portfolio, developing offline retail, and investing in technology, marketing and sales driven strategies.

Mother Sparsh is a personal care brand for mothers and infants focusing on natural organic and plant ingredients. Its main products are skin care and hair care for mothers and infants. It is worth mentioning that this brand is DTC mode. Although it has an omni channel layout, most products are sold through the official website. By the end of fiscal year 2022, the revenue of Mother Sparsh is 335 million rupees (about 29.23 million yuan), an increase of 115% year on year.

Heart Of Shade is India's first cosmetics brand with web3 concept. This time, it completed the pre seed round of financing with a valuation of 40 million rupees (about 490000 US dollars). At present, it is still a very new and small company. According to foreign media reports, this company was founded by female entrepreneur Niharika Dolui in 2022. According to Linkedin data, Niharika Dolui is also the co-founder of Hello Fans, the social meta universe.

Look for market vacancy in the corner missed by the giant, and then lead the brand with explosive products to gradually expand the category, which is a common way for many new brands to break through.

There are many such brands in the list of financing this month. Baokebei BACOLAB is an emerging household chemical Jiaqing brand represented by "wash free hand sanitizer".

This brand was founded in 2019, the beginning of the epidemic. At that time, it was interested in the improvement of people's concept of cleaning and disinfection after the epidemic, and the huge growth space of the market scale of China Nissing, especially personal health care. According to Frost&Sullivan, the average household cleaning and care expenditure of Chinese households is about 1/9 of that of the United States and Japan, while the personal health care expenditure is less than 1/10 of that of the United States and Japan.

As a result, Baokebei focuses on personal cleaning in addition to clothing and toilet cleaning, extending from personal cleaning to household space cleaning, pet environment disinfection and other scenarios, and at the same time, through innovation in product materials and design, it seeks breakthroughs while avoiding positive competition with big brands.

Take its popular product "wash free hand sanitizer" as an example. This product is alcohol free and phenol free for the first time among similar products in China, and it can achieve "24-hour antibacterial" through German patented technology. At the same time, it pays more attention to design aesthetics.

Another American cleaning personal care brand, N é cessaire, was jointly founded by Randi Christiansen, the former marketing and strategic executive of Estee Lauder Group, and Nick Axelrod, a senior editor. The main concept is to care the body as well as the face, adding some functional ingredients to the body care products, and making the body care products more refined.

For example, in addition to bath gel, skin lotion and lubricant, it has gradually expanded deodorant gel, neck essence, scalp essence and other products. In just a few years, N é cessaire has grown into the leading brand in Sephora's body care field. According to the official report of N é cessaire, N é cessaire's neck essence liquid is often sold out on Sephora and its website.

At the end of last year, the brand also entered China by entering Tmall Global. N é cessaire expects its overall retail sales to reach 35 million US dollars (about 250 million yuan) this year.