FMCG Giant Unilever Invests in SaaS and Big Data Startup Peel-Works
Mumbai headquartered Peel-Works, a SaaS and big data analytics company, has announced today that it has secured an investment from Unilever Ventures as part of its series B round. Existing investors Inventus Capital Partners and IDG Ventures India also participated in the round led by Unilever Ventures, who will be joining the board of the company.
Peel-Works platform helps retailers drive higher shoppers’ loyalty, optimising their store assortments and inventory levels, thereby reducing operational costs. In the process of delivering value to the retailers, Peel-Works platform output helps consumer brands to understand their shoppers better, cash and carry to serve the retailers better, financial technology players to lend capital to retailers economically and hyperlocals to serve their customers faster.
Sachin Chhabra, founder and CEO, Peel-Works, said, “The investment by Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, marks an important milestone for Peel-Works and brings a great validation of our model and vision. With their constant support and mentorship, we hope to create new benchmarks in building world-class SaaS products to serve our clients better.”
Unilever Ventures is the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever. They invest in early stage, promising companies, to accelerate growth by providing access to Unilever's global ecosystem, assets and expertise. The fund looks to invest in tomorrow's world leaders in personal care and digital transformation. Key focus areas within digital transformation include content creation, artificial intelligence, data analytics, ecommerce, internet of things, mobile marketing and video, in both developed and emerging markets. Unilever Venture's existing investments include notably Clavis Insight, Percolate, Blis, Gousto, Instacart, Blow, Nutrafol, Sun Basket, Iluminage Beauty, Froosh, and Voltea.
Olivier Garel, head of Unilever Ventures said “There is a great opportunity to empower the large traditional trade in fast growing markets leveraging technologies at the point-of-sale. Insights generated can be used by consumer packaged goods, ecommerce, fintech or Cash & Carry players to develop innovative solutions, improve services and sales force performances. Peel-works is taking a lead in this and we are excited to partner with them in this journey”
Peel-Works will use the fresh round of funds to further strengthen its product and technology offering, building a stellar leadership team and expanding in more geographies.
Peel-Works was set up in 2010 by Sachin Chhabra. Chhabra, an alumni of St Stephen’s College and XLRI Jamshedpur, started his career in 1996 with Hindustan Unilever and after working with the FMCG giant for 14 years quit to start Peel-Works in 2010. Nidhi Ramachandran, cofounder at Peel-Works attended Sri Ram College of Commerce and ISB. She was previously associated with Hewitt Associates for 7 years and with Teach for India.
