MAM
Purplle raises $33 mn in Series E from Paramark Ventures, existing investors
Mumbai: Online cosmetics retailer Purplle raised $33 million in Series E funding from South Korea’s Paramark Ventures as well as existing backers Blume Ventures, Kedaara and Premji Invest, the company announced on Friday.
With the latest round of funding, the startup takes its total funding to over $215 million and joins India’s coveted unicorn club with a valuation of $1.1 billion.
Purplle.com has gone through four rounds of funding from reputed investors in closing 2021 with $140 million.
“We are humbled by the conviction of our investors in brand Purplle, being a testament to the value we have created over the years,” said Purplle.com co-founder and CEO Manish Taneja. “We welcome our new investor, Paramark Ventures, and look forward to cross-country synergies. The infusion is an opportunity to further our mission of building the beauty industry in India with technological investments, scaling of our private brands, and industry-first innovations. Staying true to our purpose of making Purplle ‘Har Indian Ka Beauty Destination’ we are strongly positioned for the next phase of accelerated growth.”
“We have been tracking Purplle for several years now. We are deeply impressed with the team and platform that the founders have built over the years and are glad to be partnering with them at this stage.” said Paramark Ventures founder and managing partner Chunsoo Kim.
“Purplle is addressing the enormous vacuum in the beauty and personal care industry in India in a way that the rising demand from massive Indian consumers can be best served beyond the limited set of customers in a few major cities. And, we find the team’s determination and endeavour to build a long lasting business to serve such needs of the Indian market through technology and customer delight both apparent and inspiring,” further added Kim.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
