As the Bollywood actress continues to push into the startup sector, Deepika Padukone’s skincare business 82°E, pronounced Eighty Two East, said that it had acquired $7.5 million in seed funding.
According to the business, 82°E has received funding from a number of investors, including DSG Consumer Partners and IDEO Ventures. Last month, 82°E started selling self-care items such as moisturizers and sunscreen drops to customers in more than 30 countries.
Currently, the firm is using the capital to expand its staff, speed up research and development (R&D), and introduce new items. To create items internally, it maintains an R&D lab in Bengaluru. Its products are created in-house by R&D specialists using “time-tested Indian components.”
82°E is a personal care company with a primary focus on skincare that was founded in 2021 by Deepika Padukone and Jigar Shah and launched in November 2022.
According to Shah, the money was raised earlier in 2022, and a sizeable portion of the new money has already been used to expand 82°E’s R&D and expand its staff. The company has 35 employees in total.
Deepika Padukone and her co-founder Jigar Shah have intended the company to be an extension of the actress’ professional and personal path. She said, “We set out to introduce goods that are both authentic representations of my habits and values and of the highest possible quality and performance. We want everyone to be able to practice self-care in a way that is easy, fun, and beneficial. In order to produce long-lasting benefits with our skincare product line, we meticulously selected, handcrafted, and thoroughly tested our goods. I consider it an honor that 82°E has investors of renown joining us in our mission to make the brand a modern self-care icon created in India for the entire world.”
Among the top-paid actresses in India is a tech-savvy star who has become a successful investor in recent years. Through the totally-owned holding company she established in 2017, KA Enterprises, she has supported a number of businesses, including the unicorn online beauty retailer Purplle, the satellite/aerospace manufacturing company Bellatrix, the yogurt company Epigamia, and the pet retailer Supertails.
82°E now offers two items: one for hydration and one for protection. Shah claims that the initial product selection was deliberate because the firm took several aspects into account, including the time of year it would launch. 82°E is using a drop strategy and will continue to develop new items.
Shah did not provide numbers regarding how 82°E has performed so far, but he did mention that the company shipped to 30 countries and met its month-one shipment goal in just five and a half days. The co-founder claims that 82°E will reach an annual revenue rate (ARR) of INR 100 Cr within the next six to eight months.
Over a dozen investments have been made in recent years by Bollywood and cricket stars like Shahid Kapoor, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Anushka Sharma, Hardik Pandya, and Priyanka Chopra, sometimes in the form of sweat equity deals where they endorse the brand and receive a portion of the fee in the form of shares. Aryan Khan, the son of actor Shah Rukh Khan, also made his business debut with the introduction of the vodka line D’YAVOL.
In total, 18 Indian firms received funding from Bollywood celebrities in 2022. In addition, many of these stars became brand ambassadors for the firms they had invested in by taking part in their television and digital platform advertising.
Intriguingly, the direct-to-consumer (D2C) sector accounted for the majority of investments made by Indian actors in 2022, with the remainder going to the edtech, e-commerce, foodtech, health and fitness, and agritech sectors.
