Ninety One closes its Series A funding with INR 2250 million

~ Includes INR 1600 million from A91 Partners and INR 650 million from Fireside Ventures, Avaana Capital and Titan Capital

~ The capital will be used for strategic investments into manufacturing, brand building and exports

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai, 22nd December 2021: India’s fastest growing active lifestyle and sustainable mobility brand, Ninety One, today announced the successful completion of its Series A funding of INR 2250 million, which includes INR 1600 million from A91 Partners LLP and INR 650 million from Fireside Ventures, Avaana Capital and Titan Capital. Following the capital injection, Ninety One, the make in India, make for the world brand from AlphaVector (India) Pvt. Ltd., is now valued at ~INR 1000 crores. With 20,000+ bicycles sales per month, presence across 1,000+ retail points in 500+ cities and a million monthly unique visitors to its site http://www.outdoors91.com, Ninety One saw tremendous interest from global investors as part of this round.

Ninety One will use the new funding of ~US$ 30 million to invest in state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Gujarat, build out its electric cycles portfolio and expand into global markets. The Series A funding also sees A91 Partners’ VT Bharadwaj, Fireside Venture’s Vinay Singh and Avaana Capital’s Sandeep Singhal join the Board of Directors.

Sachin Chopra, Co-Founder and CEO, Ninety One said, “We welcome A91 Partners along with Fireside, Avaana and Titan on board our journey to create a world class active lifestyle and sustainable mobility brand. At Ninety One, our focus has always been on disrupting the bicycle and electric cycles category through engineering led product innovation and a deep brand connect with our consumers. The current funding round will help us catalyse growth multi-fold as we use the capital to deepen our supply chain, strengthen our distribution channels and build our brand story.”

Vishal Chopra, Co-Founder and Head of Digital, Ninety One said, “Our products resonate with the aspirations of India’s millennials and Gen-Z, and the funding will help us consolidate our presence in this space by enhancing our D2C connect with consumers across India. We will invest in our omni-channel capabilities by making it seamless for our consumers to discover, consider and purchase Ninety One products across our digital (website and marketplaces) and offline channels.  We will also be investing in our WYND social fitness app and Hub91 mobile based ERP.”

VT Bharadwaj, General Partner, A91 Partners LLC said, “We are excited to back Ninety One as a pioneering new age Indian active lifestyle brand that can truly deliver world class products to global consumers. Ninety One has out innovated competition in bicycles and electric cycles and emerged as a strong brand with deep distribution backed by solid manufacturing capabilities. We believe Sachin and Vishal will capitalize on this success in multiple categories and markets going ahead.”

Founded in 2015, Ninety One has successfully launched a range of innovative yet affordable products that speak to and resonate with India’s millennials and Gen-Z, giving them access to an aspirational brand that is disrupting a stagnant industry with world class engineering and D2C brand connect. Focusing on form, function and design, Ninety One’s prowess in engineering and new product development with dedicated in-house design and R&D teams have led to better products that follow a ‘make-in-India, made-for-the-world’ philosophy. Among many customer centric innovations, Ninety One pioneered ‘3.0 high-stability tyres’ cycle, ‘Magnesium light-weight’ cycle, and the ‘belt drive no-hassle chain-free’ cycle in India. Ninety One has an extensive D2C omnichannel retail presence with every customer having the satisfaction of guaranteed assembly and service through the mapping of every online purchase to a dealer offline through the 91CARES programme.

Ninety One has delivered over 5X MRR growth while addressing only 50% of its target audience market. Currently, Ninety One sells 20,000+ bikes per month across its omni channel distribution network with 80%+ of its sales coming from the men category. As, Ninety One increases its research and engineering focus on the kids and women category through innovative product launches, it expects these categories to contribute 50% of its sales over the next two years.