MUMBAI: Five months after Universal Sportsbiz Pvt. Ltd. (USPL) offloaded equity to Walmart-owned Flipkart, the Bengaluru-based fashion brand is reportedly raising Rs 300 million (about $4 million) in debt funding.
The current fund raise is from independent corporate trustee Vistra ITCL (India) Limited on behalf of Spark Alternative Investment Trust, Inc42 reports.
According to the Ministry Of Corporate Affairs filing accessed by Inc42, USPL has approved the allotment of 300 redeemable and non-convertible debentures (NCD) having the face value of Rs 1 million per share to raise a total of Rs 300 million.
Founded in 2015, USPL has built a portfolio of premier youth-focused fashion brands for young Indians, including WROGN Active (men’s athleisure line in which cricket superstar Virat Kohli holds a stake and is the brand’s face), IMARA (women’s ethnic wear, Kareena Kapoor Khan brand face), Ms. Taken (women’s western wear, Kriti Sanon face of the brand), and SINGLE (men’s casual wear brand, which Ranbir Kapoor fronts).
USPL’s flagship brand WROGN has been among the leading brands on Flipkart group company Myntra over the last few years.
USPL brands are also present in over 750 offline retail outlets in more than 100 cities across India and USPL has been growing at 40-50 per cent year-on-year.
Before offloading stake to Flipkart, USPL had earlier raised Rs 113 million from Accel and NB Ventures in Series E round in May 2020 at an estimated valuation of Rs 12.5 billion. After allocation of shares in the Series E round, Accel held the biggest stake in the company, controlling 51.38% shareholding. Company founder Anjana Reddy held 19.55% whereas cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar held a 6.14% stake. NB Ventures and Alteria Capital Advisors held 4.49 and 1.03% stake respectively and ESOPs made up nearly 3.72%.
Before that, in October 2018, USPL had raised $13.5 million (around Rs 1 billion) from investors, valuing the company at around Rs 12 billion.
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