Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, has invested an undisclosed amount in FirstCry.com, an e-commerce platform for baby and maternity products.
"A positive nod from a business leader of Tata’s stature is a great vote of confidence in the way we have created the ecosystem and validation of the business approach leading to definitive path to profitability," said Supam Maheshwari, founder and CEO of FirstCry.
Ratan Tata has made more than a dozen startup investment since 2015 and Firstcry is the fourth investment in 2016 for Ratan Tata after he backed pet portal DogSpot, data analytic startup Tracxn, and cashback and coupons site CashKaro - in his personal capacity.
Founded in 2010 by Maheshwari and Amitava Saha, FirstCry was initially an exclusive online retailer which now operates a hybrid online-offline model for retailing kids products. FirstCry has now morphed into a multi-channel retailer with presence across the web, mobile and offline segments. It has about 100 FirstCry-branded franchisee stores across 85 cities besides its e-commerce site.
Firstcry competitors are Babyoye, which was acquired by the Mahindra group, and Hopscotch backed by Facebook's co-founder Eduardo Saverin, early-stage investor Velos Capital and LionRock Capital, among others.
FirstCry has raised $69 million of funding in total so far from investors including IDG Ventures India, SAIF Partners, Vertex Ventures, Valiant Capital and NEA.
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