Personal care brand mCaffeine’s parent brand Pep Technologies has raised Rs 240 crores ($31.5 million) in its Series C round led by Paragon Partners. Other participants of the round are Sharrp Ventures, Amicus Capital Partners and RPSG Capital Ventures.

This is Paragon Partners’ first investment in the personal care sector. For this round, Pep Technologies was valued at Rs 1000 crores. The funds will be used to expand to 12 countries and to acquire smaller verticals in the beauty space from across India and abroad.

The startup was founded in 2016 by Mohit Jain, Saurabh Singhal, Tarun Sharma, Vaishali Gupta and Vikas Lachhwani. The brand has a portfolio of over 50 caffeine-infused products. This includes soaps, shampoos, oils and others. They have a strong customer base of over 2.5 million spread across 18,000 pin codes. 

They have so far raised $37.4 million in their 5 rounds of funding. Telama Investments and boAt’s co-founder Aman Gupta are a few of its investors. They have raised Rs 20 million in an angel round in 2016. In its Series A round they raised $2 million and in their Series B round they raised Rs 220 million. 

The D2C space for beauty and personal care is highly competitive. Honasa Consumer backed Mamaearth and The Derma Co and The Good Glamm Group-backed MyGlamm and Organic Harvest are few of the competitors in this field.