GlobalBees, a Thrasio-style startup launched by FirstCry and Edelweiss execs, raises $150 million in few months of launch

• The Series A round was led by FirstCry and a few of its existing investors, and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
  
• GlobalBees will bring more native brands from Amazon, Flipkart and other e-commerce platforms into its portfolio.
  
• Last month, rival 10Club had closed Asia’s biggest seed funding at $40 million.
  

New Delhi-based GlobalBees, a Thrasio-style investment platform, has raised $150 million in a mix of equity and debt in its Series A funding round led by FirstCry, Lightspeed Venture Partners and few other existing investors.


This is the largest Series A funding round closed by a Thrasio-style startup in India. Thras.io is a New York-based e-commerce player that acquires small merchants and brands listed on Amazon marketplace. After the acquisition of Amazon seller’s businesses, the brand scales them up.


Thrasio has acquired more than 100 third party sellers or fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) businesses and is valued somewhere between $3 billion to $4 billion.



GlobalBees will follow the same approach to bring more native brands from Amazon, Flipkart and other e-commerce platforms into its portfolio. The company looks to partner with beauty, personal care, home, kitchen, food, nutrition, sports, lifestyle and others. These companies should have a revenue rate of $1 million-$20 million.

“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,” the company’s chief executive and co-founder Nitin Agarwal said.

He further added that the company would also bring in strategic capabilities across marketing,growth, technology, distribution, sourcing, branding, warehousing, logistics, research and development (R&D), product development and operations. The company will leverage the presence of FirstCry in international markets for sourcing and distribution.

GlobalBees was founded by online baby product retailer FirstCry co-founder Supam Maheshwari and Edelweiss’ former president and group chief investment officer (CIO) Agarwal earlier this year. The company is said to be in talks acquiring and growing over 10 direct to consumer brands.


The latest round would lead to Vikas Agnihotri of Softbank, Harsha Kumar of Lightspeed, Atul Gupta of Premji Invest, Sudhir Sethi of Chiratae Ventures and Kshitij Sheth of Chrys Capital to join GlobalBees’ board.

Over the past six months, several other companies following a similar model have raised funding. This includes 10Club that closed Asia’s biggest $40 million seed funding round last month, Powerhouse91 and Evenflow.