The Ayurveda Experience raises $6 million in Anicut-led round

Other investors that participated included Mariwala family office Sharrp Ventures and Singularity Ventures, Riverwalk Holdings and Emerge Capital, TAE founder and CEO Rishabh Chopra told ET in an interaction.

TAE retails over 100 stock keeping units across three beauty and personal care brands – Iyura, Ajara and A. Modernica; and one supplement, food and beverage brand Ayuttva. iYURA, with traditional Ayurveda formulations, captures about 80% of the D2C company’s revenues.

The freshly infused capital will be used to enter new geographies and expand TAE’s base in existing markets – North America, Europe, Canada, Australia and India. It will also be used to enhance the company’s research and development, supply chain and manufacturing capabilities, it said in a statement.

With an overall customer base of 8,40,000, the Ayurveda-focused D2C skincare and nutrition brand has booked over Rs 235 crore of revenue in trailing 12 months ended November 2022. The brand primarily sells its products through its website, but opened its first offline store in Los Angeles in October.

“The plan from here on is about 46% year-on-year growth going forward (for the next five years) and more penetration in the markets that we’re in, doing a lot more than on the branding activities, strengthening the research where we have about 13 scientists in our lab that is inside the The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) facility in Gurugram. We opened our first store in early October in Los Angeles and another one opening next month,” Chopra told ET.

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Prior to the current round of funding, TAE had raised an angel round of funding in 2016 at a scale of Rs 3 crore in yearly revenue, led by Teamwork Arts chairman Mohit Satyanand. In 2018, it had raised its first institutional round of funding from Fireside Ventures and Centrum Group’s Kalpvriksh Fund. In 2021, it raised funding from Rishabh Mariwala-led Sharpp ventures and early-stage fund Riverwalk Holdings.
TAE’s parent entity, Transformative Learning, started off as a content publishing platform for Indian philosophy, selling to the West, which then migrated to become an Ayurveda educational course business from 2014 to 2016. From 2016 onwards, the business pivoted into a marketplace for Ayurvedic brands out of India, but from the next year, decided to start building their own brands as the segment’s choices were limited.

Currently, nearabout 95% of TAE’s business is clocked from outside India and about 90% of the business is D2C in nature, with the rest of the business coming through marketplaces in markets that are being experimented with.

“The Ayurveda Experience being one of the main players will surely make leaps in success with the team they have and this fundraise will help them to reach the deeper markets of the country,” Dhruv Kapoor, partner, Anicut Capital said.

Other D2C companies that house Ayurveda wellness brands and are venture capital-backed include 2019-founded The Ayurveda Co, 2002-founded Kama Ayurveda, 2016-founded Kapiva, 2019-founded Khadi Essentials, 2016-founded Aadar and recently acquired Oziva among others.