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Thrasio style Investment Firm UpScalio raises $42.5 million led by Presight Capital & Others

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UpScalio, a Thrasio-style investment firm, has raised $42.5 million in a Series A round led by Presight Capital and an unnamed global hedge fund.

The funding round was also attended by Heliad Equity Partners, MPGI, 468 Capital, and Whiteboard Capital, according to the company.

A group of lenders, including the newly minted unicorn OfBusiness, Innoven Capital, and Alteria Capital, has also invested in the platform.

Suhail Sameer (CEO, BharatPe), Radhika Ghai (Co-Founder, ShopClues), Rohit Kapoor (CEO, OYO India & SEA), Arjun Vaidya (Founder, Dr Vaidya's), and Erik Podzuweit (Founder, Scalable Capital) are among the company's angel investors and advisors.

The Thrasio model, popularised by Thrasio, the world's largest acquirer of third-party private label businesses on Amazon, is gaining traction in India.

Within three years of its launch, Thrasio had acquired, consolidated, and scaled up approximately 100 Amazon brands. According to reports, the profitable company has raised $1.7 billion in debt and equity and is worth $3-$4 billion.

UpScalio aspires to be an e-commerce brand investor and operator by collaborating with digital-first brands that sell on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, and Nykaa.

According to the company, it will assist them in scaling profitably.

According to the company, the Indian ecommerce market is one of the fastest growing in the world and is expected to grow at a rate of more than 35% per year over the next five years.

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this expansion, with ecommerce's share of retail sales more than doubling in the last year.

“Despite this high growth environment, marketplace entrepreneurs are sometimes unable to achieve their full potential due to capital and operating constraints,” it said in a statement.

UpScalio will assist brands with multi-marketplace management, digital marketing, branding, logistics, sourcing, finance, and business operations, all of which will be optimised through the use of advanced analytics.

Upscalio was founded by former McKinsey & Company consultant Gautam Kshatriya, former Bain & Company consultant Saaim Khan, and former Disney+Hotstar and Purplle marketing and growth executive Nitin Agarwal.

“This team is expected to double to over 100 by the end of the year as the ecommerce accelerator launches operations with its partner businesses,” the company said.

The company is looking at a ticket size of anywhere between Rs 5 crore and Rs 50 crore.

“Having said that, we are flexible, especially on the upper end, for high quality assets and entrepreneurs,” said Gautam Kshatriya, CEO and cofounder of UpScalio. “We are in advanced stages of transactions with several brands and will be announcing those soon.”

In India, a few former investors and entrepreneurs have launched their own Thrasio-style investment platforms.

Former Medlife and Myntra CEO Ananth Narayanan is also launching his own Thrasio-like platform.

The venture has received $25 million in funding from Accel, Falcon Edge, and Norwest Venture Partners.