Raw Pressery and Turnip
Jan 22
Good morning, it's Friday and we're done with yet another week. I've been quarantined at home for the week so am quite looking forward to stepping out of the house (in a socially distanced manner). And on to the news today, we have an acquisition of DNVB and a gaming platform raising some capital.
http://bit.ly/361IVi5: Wingreens Farms acquires Raw Pressery
➡️ In more M&A news this January, the the sauces & dips company Wingreen Farms has acquired Raw Pressery in a deal that values the company at around 100-Rs 110 Cr (the investors will get shares in Wingreen Farms while founders are cashing out).
➡️ This might be one of the larger M&A outcomes amongst DVNB (digitally native vertical brand), but unfortunately isn't really a great outcome for the founders or investors- the company has raised over 200 Cr till date and was last valued at 500 Cr.
➡️ It sounds like the company was potentially cash-strapped which might have influenced the exit price, but the company was also in a really interesting yet niche space. Cold pressed juices are still quite niche in the US itself (though are fairly popular in the larger cities), so the Indian consumer demand is not quite there yet.
➡️ Though there has been a growing trend of healthier consumer products that have been coming up and doing decently well as of late- Epigamia (yogurt), yogabars (museli, protein bars & more), maybe they cannot build massive brands (niche segments are harder to scale).
➡️ This also brings up the point if all DNVB need to be ventured-backed, not all brands need to grow and be valued at hundreds of millions or a couple billions of dollars- there is definitely scope for smaller brands growing without raising as much capital in the form of equity. Abhiroop, the founder of Velocity (revenue based financing for brands) talks more about it in a thread here
http://bit.ly/39VMM1c: Turnip raises $1.63M in a seed round led by Elevation Capital
➡️ A live streaming and community platform for gaming, Turnip, has raised $1.63M in a seed round led by Elevation Capital. The company was started in April last year by Pooja Dubey and Aditya Sharma and lets gamers stream concurrently on platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitch while also letting their community engage with them on a mobile-first platform.
➡️ I can tell that the company might have been slightly inspired by Discord (since they have similar logos), but the way they're going about building a product for the Indian gaming community sounds cool- gamers can stream directly from their phone since a lot of the popular games in the country are played on phones (Gareena Free Fire, PUBG, and more)
➡️ The platform is designed for the Indian Gen Z (maybe millennials too?) and will likely get more popular as gaming and streaming continues to become mainstream in the country- the Andrpod app has already been downloaded by 250,000 users.
➡️ There are a couple of platforms in the space with Rheo TV and Rooter, and while I don't have a great sense of who the popular streamers in India are- I wonder if we something similar like in the US where the companies try to sign gamers and streamers to exclusive contracts on their platforms and potentially let them invest in the company.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated
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