Over the past six months, a string of startups across consumer, fintech, and ecommerce brands have found strategic buyers, as a recovery in M&A exits that began in 2025 gathers pace. The latest sign of this was L’Oréal’s majority stake buy of beauty and personal care startup Innovist last week, India’s largest D2C acquisition.
The trend has been particularly strong in the consumer and retail segment, where Marico snapped up premium popcorn brand 4700BC and plant-based nutrition brand Cosmix earlier this year. Previously, the FMCG giant had bought majority stake in nutritional supplement brand Plix (2023) and breakfast foods brand True Elements (2022).
Besides Marico, pharma major USV bought Wellbeing Nutrition in February, and Gurugram-based beauty and healthcare firm Puresta acquired skincare brand SkinQ. In fintech, Pine Labs bought ecommerce enabler Shopflo for Rs 88 crore, while Oxyzo Financial Services, the financial arm of OfBusiness, said it will buy online bond distribution platform GoldenPi . More recently, value-commerce unicorn Meesho said it will buy B2B commerce startup Kirana Club for Rs 202 crore .
