It's beauty startups vs horizontal cos

1. It's beauty startups
vs horizontal cos
Specialized On-Demand Service Providers Eye
Funds Pie

2. Contd…
StayGlad, an on-demand beauty services provider, just closed its first
institutional round of funding from Silicon Valley fund Bessemer Venture
Partners and Anil Chopra, ex-CEO of Lakme. What's interesting is that last
week Bessemer led a $25-million round in Gurgaonbased UrbanClap, which
is a horizontal local and home services marketplace and in some way
competes with StayGlad. Beauty is one the few vertical categories in the app-
based local and home services market to have managed initial capital with
players like BigStylist, Belita and The Home Salon, among others, getting
early funds. However, these ventures face increasing competition from the
likes of UrbanClap and Housejoy that offer beauty along with multiple other
services and have been able to rake in more venture money . This horizontal-
versus-vertical fight is reminiscent of what happened in the products e-
commerce market a few years ago.

3. Contd…
Founded by three IIT-Kharagpur graduates Kavish Desai, Shashank Gupta and
Prateek Jain, StayGlad had raised seed funding from Tracxn Labs and Delhivery's co-
founder Sahil Barua earlier and has now scooped up around $1.5 million. “Beauty
services is a large market which requires a lot of focus to create the best customer
experience, I clearly see a focused vertical player winning this market,“ said Sta
yGlad's Jain. He claims that StayGlad, with 150 beauty professionals on board,
receives 300-400 requests in Bangalore, the only city it is present in. With plans to
raise more capital, StayGlad is slotted to enter Delhi soon.
Anand Lunia, partner at early-stage fund India Quotient, which has invested in
Mumbai-based Belita, says beauty needs a brand which is not possible to create in
a horizontal play . Also, the market size is big enough in beauty segment for it to
stay independent. “We've seen that many generalized services players are
becoming verticals,“ he said. But Varun Khaitan, co-fo under of UrbanClap, posits
otherwise, “I think horizontal will win.

4. Contd…
There are lots of scale benefits in terms of customer acquisition, retention
and network effects on supply side. We are the largest beauty player with
150+ bookings per day .And, as an example, horizontals have a clear win
even in product e-commerce.“
According to Tracxn, as many as 84 startups, which let consumers book
manicure, facial and hair styling services at home, operate in the beauty
services market -most of which were founded over the past year.
The beauty services segment, which doesn't include products, is estimated
to be about $2 billion in size locally. “Till June, we were doing 1,000 requests
per month but that has gone up to 2,500 now. So the growth potential is
very clear. Beauty services as a segment needs vertical players with special
expertise coupled with in-depth knowledge of the sector,“ said Akshay Jain,
co-founder of Belita, which raised Rs 2.5 crore in August this year.

5. For details and bookings contact:-
Parveen Kumar Chadha… THINK TANK
(Founder and C.E.O of Saxbee Consultants & Other-Mother
marketingandcommunicationconsultants.com)
Email :-saxbeeconsultants@gmail.com
Mobile No. +91-9818308353
Address:-First Floor G-20(A), Kirti Nagar, New Delhi India Postal Code-110015