Roll-up brands firm Goat Brand Labs raises $21 million in a mix of debt and equity

Goat Brand Labs has raised $21 million in a mix of debt and equity from a clutch of investors, including BlackRock, Mayfield and NB Ventures, amid continued stress in the wider space.

The Bengaluru-based company, which operates in the ecommerce roll-up space, declined to comment on the funding breakup or the valuation at which the funding happened. However, sources said it was mostly through debt financing.

In the ecommerce roll-up space, firms acquire and scale up multiple brands. The segment has been under stress in recent months as a wider shortage of funding and challenges around scaling up weigh on the ecosystem, ET had reported in January.


Goat Brand, according to founder Rishi Vasudev, will use the funds for expansion in channels like quick commerce, offline stores and exports, with a focus on growing brands like Chumbak, TrueBrowns, The Label Life, Pepe Jeans Inner Fashion, Voylla, Petcrux and Nutriglow.

“Our brands are seeing good profitable scale up, with a couple of them just a few quarters away from the Rs 100-crore ARR (annualised revenue run rate) mark,” Vasudev said in a statement.

Some existing investors such as ecommerce major Flipkart’s venture arm did not participate in the funding.
Goat Brand is currently at an ARR of Rs 370 crore and aiming to turn profitable on an earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) basis in the second half of this financial year, Vasudev told ET.

Smaller startups in the space like 10club and Upscalio are trying out pivots or looking to be acquired, with one of Upscalio’s brands, footwear maker Trase, being re-acquired from the roll-up firm by Trase’s cofounders in April.

In May last year, US-based Thrasio divested the majority of its holding in local consumer durables brand Lifelong India to the latter’s founders and other investors, roughly a year after acquiring the stake.

Meanwhile, larger players like Mensa Brands, Good Glamm Group and IPO-bound FirstCry’s arm GlobalBees have been reworking their strategy towards focusing on certain brands and growing sustainably.

The fortunes of the Indian roll-up ecosystem roughly mirrors that of Thrasio, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of February and emerged from the same in June, appointing a new chief executive officer and restructuring itself to focus on profitability.