What is Firstcry all about?
FirstCry is an online-to-offline brand that sells a variety of products for newborns, children, and mothers. The idea arose from a desire to address the issue of millions of Indian parents not having access to the top brands and baby care items for their children. Firstcry success story is also attributed to the diverse amount of product categories they cater to that include diapering, feeding and nursing, skin and health care, toys, apparel, footwear, fashion accessories, and much more.
Firstcry.com offers a product assortment of over 90,000 goods from over 1200 foreign and Indian companies. Mattel, Ben10, Pigeon, Funskool, Hotwheels, Nuby, Farlin, Medela, Pampers, Disney, Barbie, Gerber, and Fisher Price are prominent ones among them.
The organization offers the best merchandise and brands at reasonable costs, as well as a quality online shopping experience, fast and dependable delivery service, and rapid customer support.
Founders/Owners
Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha launched FirstCry.
Supam Maheshwari, the CEO and co-founder of FirstCry, is an IIM Ahmedabad graduate and a Delhi College of Engineering engineer. He is a first-generation entrepreneur who co-founded XpressBees, one of India’s leading logistics firms. Supam was the co-founder and CEO of Brainvisa Technologies, one of India’s leading e-learning enterprises, prior to starting FirstCry.
Amitava Saha, FirstCry’s COO and co-founder, holds an MBA from IIM Lucknow and a B.Tech from IIT Varanasi. Saha also collaborated with Supam on the XpressBees launch. Following the success of XpressBees, they teamed together once more for FirstCry.
Startup and Success Story
The idea came up in 2010, when the alternatives for purchasing infant care and children’s items online in India were exceedingly restricted. Supam, the co-founder and owner of FirstCry, would buy items for his kid while on business trips. The circumstance made him recognise the enormous possibilities in the Indian market for an online platform that would provide Indian parents with access to the best infant care brands from across the world. Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha founded FirstCry in this manner.
FirstCry initially operated on an inventory-based approach, with the company simply distributing items throughout the country from warehouses in Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata. After a few years, FirstCry began to add shops to its platform and offered local businesses the option to sell their items on its website.
Today, the firm also offers two private labels: BabyHug, which sells baby and children’s clothing, and CuteWalk, which sells footwear. FirstCry has grown to become one of the largest online shopping platforms for children, with over 350 franchised brick-and-mortar stores in over 125 Indian cities.
Business Model
FirstCry operates on a hybrid business model that combines online and physical venues. Aside from its large online presence, the firm has over 400 outlets in India, including 350 franchise stores.
FirstCry also has a one-of-a-kind initiative in which it distributes a ‘FirstCry Box’ to over 70,000 parents each month. As a symbol of congratulations on the birth of their child, this initiative provides free gift boxes to new parents in 6,000 hospitals across the country. The gift includes essentials such as diapers, baby lotion, and baby oil from well-known brands such as Mamy Poko and Libero. Through this effort, FirstCry has reached out to millions of parents in India to far.
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Funding and Investors
FirstCry has received $741.4 million in investment across ten rounds. On March 30, 2021, the company received $313 million in capital through a secondary market transaction and a venture round.
The famous kids and baby product marketplace became a unicorn after a $296 million investment round led by Softbank in February 2020.
Valuation
FirstCry is one among India’s unicorns, with a recent valuation of $1.9 billion. It should be emphasised that the projected worth is based on FirstCry’s forecasts, and there is no fresh valuation study to back up the unicorn claims. Firstcry has secured $13 million (INR 95 crore) in equity capital from pi Ventures through its opportunity fund I. TPG, ChrysCapital, and Premji Invest – has invested around $315 million in Firstcry, valuing the infant goods firm at approximately $1.9 billion.
Growth and Revenue
FirstCry’s FY20 revenue increased by 65.8 percent, rising from $73.59 million (INR 535 crore) in FY 2019 to $122.07 million (INR 887.5 crore) in FY 2020.
The firm’s income has surely increased year after year, but based on the financials released for FY21, we can deduce that the Supam Maheshwari-led company prospered. According to papers dated April 4, 2022, the Pune-based infant and kids marketplace made a profit of Rs 215.94 crore, up from a deficit of Rs 190.8 crore the previous year. This year, the company’s consolidated sales increased by 141.3 percent to Rs 1740 crore.
Competitors
The firm has a significant market presence. To some extent, FirstCry and newborn care have become synonymous. Thus, while there is no direct rivalry for FirstCry, online portals such as Myntra and Amazon may provide some challenge to the company’s web base. Local vendors and entrepreneurs may compete with FirstCry’s offline outlets.
