ABFRL ties up with Masaba Gupta, to build new next-gen luxury lifestyle business

Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited has announced a strategic partnership with India’s leading designer Ms. Masaba Gupta to build a gen-next focused fashion and lifestyle business under the popular and contemporary brand “Masaba” by way of entering into a Binding Term sheet to acquire 51% stake in the entity.

This partnership aims to create a young, aspirational and digital-led portfolio play, across the affordable luxury segment in the fashion, beauty and accessory categories, said the company statement.

Brand “Masaba” will be scaled predominantly through the digital direct to consumer (D2C) channel, leveraging its strong connect with younger and digitally influenced consumers. The brand will straddle across the entire lifestyle offerings ranging from apparel, accessories, beauty and other lifestyle products. The brand is targeting to achieve annual revenues of around Rs. 500 Cr in the next 5 years, the statement added.

This partnership will also mark ABFRL’s entry into the beauty & personal care market in India, which offers tremendous opportunity to build distinctive, scalable home-grown brands. This is a rapidly growing segment driven by an increase in women shoppers, rise in disposable incomes and acceleration in digital influence.

Commenting on the partnership, Ashish Dikshit, Managing Director, ABFRL said: “As a new generation of young and digitally native consumers explore their needs within fashion and lifestyle, they actively seek brands that are colourful, vivid and digital. Masaba is a young, effervescent brand with a refreshing and innovative take on every lifestyle category.” He added, “This partnership is also an important step in building presence in the fast-growing beauty and personal care segment.  This fits in well with our overall strategy to partner India’s top most designers to build a portfolio of distinctive and aspirational home-grown brands across fashion and lifestyle categories.

Masaba Gupta, Founder, House of Masaba said, " As a young, homegrown brand I am delighted to partner with ABRFL to further solidify the House of Masaba into a 360-degree, global lifestyle brand of the future. Inspired by the ever-evolving, India-Proud Gen Z consumer, the brand will introduce multiple product extensions bringing Cosmetics, Personal Care, Athleisure & Home Decor to its portfolio. The House of Masaba already has established a strong foothold among the youth with a robust digital-first strategy and the tie-up with ABRFL will strengthen this position, making the brand future ready.”

The proposed acquisition is subject to signing of definitive agreements, completion of closing conditions precedent to be set out in the definitive agreements and statutory approvals, if any. Wazir Advisors acted as sole advisors for this Transaction.