Glamplus

Glamplus is a Bengaluru-headquartered company operating a SaaS-enabled B2B marketplace for the beauty, personal care and wellness sector. Its software lets small, medium and large salons, spas and retail beauty chains digitise daily operations, covering billing, digital invoicing, appointments, employee and staff management, inventory, expenses, marketing campaigns and analytics reporting on revenue and staff productivity. The platform is available as a web application and on Android, and includes a WhatsApp chatbot through which end customers can make bookings or send queries, plus WhatsApp promotional campaigns run on behalf of member salons.

Alongside the software, Glamplus operates a supply business, selling professional beauty and personal care products to salons and spas both offline and online, having tied up directly with brands such as Berdo, Mamaearth and L'Oreal Matrix so partner salons can order from multiple brands in one app. It has extended product supply to modern trade channels including supermarket chains, shopping malls and medical stores. The company operates warehousing to support fulfilment, including a warehouse in Noida and, as of the January 2024 funding announcement, a newly launched centralised warehouse intended to speed order processing, inventory management and delivery. Its legal entity is listed as RDV Design Technologies Private Limited.

Founding story

The company was started in July 2020, during the pandemic, by three founders who had known each other for about five years: Divyanshu Kumar Singh (CEO), Rohan Singh (COO) and Vatsalya Agarwal (CTO). Divyanshu had previously worked at startups including Pagarbook, Bounce, Ninjacart and Ola; Rohan had worked at Transln Logistics and Blackbuck; and Vatsalya had been a full-stack developer at Quotient Technology, Navya Networks and Cubito. The founders put in Rs 10 lakh of their own savings to bootstrap and build the initial technology.

Business model

Glamplus combines a subscription SaaS product for salons and spas with a B2B marketplace and distribution operation that supplies beauty and personal care products to those same businesses, a model it describes as moving from B2B SaaS into B2B2C. It procures directly from manufacturers and brands, removing intermediaries from the supply chain, and passes margin to salon partners while also supplying modern trade outlets and stores.

Revenue comes from software subscriptions and from product sales. Subscription packages follow a seven-day free trial with three-month, six-month, one-year and multi-year plans priced from Rs 1,500 to Rs 5,000, while WhatsApp promotional campaigns for member salons were priced at about $50. Product distribution to salons, spas and retail channels forms the second revenue line.

Traction

In 2021 the company reported a team of more than 20, over 20,000 B2B2C customers, more than 1,000 paying B2B partners, an ARR of about Rs 1 crore with a target of Rs 3 crore within six months, and claimed 3x month-on-month growth. By the January 2024 funding announcement it reported more than 9,500 beauty business clients, over 600,000 B2C customers, more than 2,000 listed SKUs and 12 percent annual growth, with a stated aim of adding 1,000 B2B beauty clients within six months and reaching profitability by Q1 2024. A third-party profile reports FY23 revenue of Rs 26.1 crore, up 53.8 percent from Rs 17.0 crore in FY22.

Latest developments

In January 2024 Glamplus announced a pre-Series A round of about Rs 16.5 crore from Upsparks Capital, Eagle10 Ventures, ITI Growth Opportunities Fund and Inflection Point Ventures, with participation from Kube VC, Gopal Krishna Varshney and IR Capital Partners, to fund B2B expansion in tier I and tier II Indian cities and international market entry. Around the same time it launched a centralised warehouse for order processing, inventory management and fulfilment, and stated a target of reaching profitability by Q1 2024.