India’s Thrasio-style investment venture, GlobalBees has raised $150 million in a mix of equity and debt in a Series A led by FirstCry and some of its investors with additional participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

This is the largest Series A funding round by an Indian Thrasio style startup in the country. With this round, Vikas Agnihotri of Softbank, Harsha Kumar of Lightspeed, Atul Gupta of Premji Invest, Sudhir Sethi of Chiratae Ventures, and Kshitij Sheth of Chrys Capital will join the GlobalBees board.

With a focus on capital efficiency, GlobalBees looks to partner with digitally native brands across categories like beauty, personal care, home, kitchen, food, nutrition, sports, lifestyle, etc. with a revenue rate of  $1-20 million, which as per the company, is proof of a great product-market fit. 

Commenting on the investment, Nitin Agarwal, Co-Founder, and CEO, GlobalBees, said, "GlobalBees aims to unleash the power of product innovation by Indian entrepreneurs and strategically partner with them to help them realize the full potential of their brand and products.  Apart from capital, GlobalBees brings in strategic capabilities across marketing and growth, technology, distribution, sourcing, branding, warehousing, logistics, R&D, product development, and operations, all things essential to rapidly scale the brands in the digital space."

FirstCry Co-Founder, Supam Maheshwari, and Nitin Agarwal had earlier co-founded Brainvisa Technologies back in 2000. A brainstorming session around creating a vibrant D2C ecosystem and partnering with exciting fellow entrepreneurs brought two long-time friends together to start GlobalBees.

"We are extremely excited to have a stellar list of investors on our cap table and we are looking to partner with founders who have built brands based on unique consumer insights. The funds raised will play a crucial role in helping us scale these brands globally," Nitin added.

Vikas Agnihotri, Operating Partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, stated, "India is at the cusp of a D2C revolution with an estimated market size of $200 billion in the next 5 years. Indian brands have shown great promise in the recent years, and we believe that GlobalBees is building great assets to accelerate the growth of digitally native brands in the country."

Sudhir Sethi, Founder, and Chairman, Chiratae Ventures India, added, "GlobalBees presents a unique technology platform to consolidate D2C Brands and massively scale them in India and the world. Chiratae is excited to support and invest in GlobalBees." 

"Globalbees is deepening our partnership with Firstcry and is a strong validation of our confidence in the founders," said  Atul Gupta from Premji Invest.