Chennai-based Rusabl is a brand that sells eco-friendly daily utility goods such as bamboo toothbrushes and steel straws, amongst others, is Evenflow’s second acquisition within a month.
Evenflow Brands Tech Pvt Ltd, a Thrasio-style e-commerce rollup, has acquired Rusabl, a three-year-old e-commerce digital-first brand in the sustainable category.
Founded by former Uber executive Utsav Agarwal in 2021, Evenflow aggregates third-party sellers on e-commerce platforms like Flipkart and Amazon. It acquires online marketplace sellers in a range of $200k-$1.5 mn per brand.
Chennai-based Rusabl is a brand that sells eco-friendly daily utility goods such as bamboo toothbrushes and steel straws, amongst others, is Evenflow’s second acquisition within a month. Last week, the startup had acquired BabyPro, an online brand in the baby proofing category.
As per World Bank, the global annual waste generation is expected to jump to 3.4 billion tonnes over the next 30 years, up from 2.01 billion tonnes in 2016. The East Asia and Pacific region are responsible for generating close to a quarter (23 percent) of all waste, which is sustainable. Today, the Indian consumer doesn’t have enough affordable brands in the sustainable space to pick from; hence, creating robust options becomes imperative.
Talking about the acquisition, Evenflow’s co-founder and CEO, Utsav Agarwal, said, “We loved the products Rusabl offers, and Mayank has put in a lot of thought in not just the products, but in packaging and branding it too. We want to build daily sustainability as a category within Evenflow and establish Rusabl as an affordable, sustainable option in the daily utility space, cutting across categories like lifestyle, home & kitchen, personal care, office commodities, etc. Based on the ongoing trends, eco-friendly products already make a $5.6B market in India.”
Evenflow has acquired the Rusabl at an upfront amount basis EBITDA multiple valuations. With that, Rusabl’s founder, Mayank Jain, has joined the startup as a full-time employee to build the sustainable category through more product launches.
“Evenflow felt like an obvious choice to partner with — given their belief in the brand’s vision and the team they’ve managed to build. We are confident & excited to see Rusabl become huge with an execution-first approach across the team at Evenflow,” Jain added.
Unlike other Thrasio- style rollups focusing on D2C brands, Evenflow is heavily focused on third-party sellers on marketplaces and acquires them at EBITDA multiples, not revenue multiples. Evenflow has been acquiring third-party e-commerce sellers with attractive product portfolios and aims to establish them as solid brands across multiple categories in e-commerce.
The sheer width of sellers across different categories is massive and is only growing year on year. In 2020, over 700,000 sellers signed up on Amazon India, making it the highest among any Amazon marketplace globally. Also, globally, third-party sellers on Amazon crossed $300 bn in GMV & are expected to reach $650 bn in GMV by 2025. While they have good product portfolios, they do not have the expertise and capital to scale, where e-commerce aggregators become enablers.
Source: Business World
