1. While working on his ed-tech startup, Brainvisa, Supam Maheshwari became a father. His frequent travels to the United States and Europe often led him to bring back toys for his newborn daughter. After Brainvisa was acquired, he started looking for toys locally, which proved to be a frustrating experience.
2. He found it difficult to find a variety of high-quality products. The Indian baby care products market, worth 50,000 crore INR, was largely unorganized, with 95% of sales happening offline. This inspired him to revolutionize how parents shop for their children.
3. Supam founded Brainbees Solutions to launch an online platform offering high-quality baby care and kids’ products. With his colleague Amitava Saha as co-founder and 2.5 crore INR from friends and family, he took the first step. In September 2010, FirstCry was born.
4. Supam began with an inventory-based model, shipping products nationwide from four warehouses in Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, and Kolkata. FirstCry quickly grew, reaching 100 crore INR in gross merchandise value (GMV) by 2011. However, Supam knew that customer retention was crucial and came up with a new idea.
5. In 2011, he launched Goodlife, an online store for home and personal care products. He also opened franchise-driven physical stores in tier 2 and 3 towns such as Bhilai, Dehradun, Haridwar, and Bharuch. By 2013, FirstCry had scaled to 250 crore INR in GMV with a 30% customer retention rate.
6. With stores reaching profitability within three months, FirstCry had 100 stores, 600 brands, and 25,000 products by 2014. Supam maintained a focus on online sales by launching private labels BabyHug (apparel) and CuteWalk (footwear). FirstCry’s revenue soared to 118.08 crore INR by 2015.
7. FirstCry had spent very little on marketing, so Supam partnered with 6,000 hospitals to send a “FirstCry box” containing diapers, lotion, and other items from premium brands like Mamy Poko and Libero to new mothers. The strategy was successful.
8. The company delivered 200,000 boxes and offered 90,000 items across 180 stores, providing detailed product descriptions and online inventory status for orders placed before a store visit. The big news came on October 17, 2016.
9. FirstCry acquired its biggest competitor, Mahindra’s retail 120-store franchise business Babyoye, for 362.1 crore INR. It became FirstCry—A Mahindra FirstCry Venture. By 2019, it had expanded to 283 stores and raised 1,096.94 crore INR at a valuation of 6,057.58 crore INR.
10. By February 2021, FirstCry had grown to 400 stores and reached a revenue of 1,842.27 crore INR with a profit of 337.34 crore INR. It raised an additional 2,120.5 crore INR from Tiger Global at a valuation of 8,482 crore INR, making it the fourth Unicorn of 2021.
➡️Today, FirstCry is a 22,400 crore INR company with over 5,650 crore INR in sales. Seventy-seven percent of its sales come from online transactions, and it plans to list with an 1,815 crore INR IPO soon.
Supam Maheshwari continues to provide FirstCry boxes to 70,000 mothers monthly.