ARIA invested in Sundose
Sundose, a D2C e-commerce platform offering personalized nutritional supplements, has joined ARIA’s portfolio. ARIA invested in Sundose as part of Round A funding from a group of international funds: Atmos Ventures (USA), DX Ventures (Germany), Investible Club (Australia), Polipo Ventures (Australia). The value of the round was USD 6 million.
ARIA’s investment team, consisting of: Dariusz Lewandowski (Investment Partner), Grzegorz Żebrowski (Investment Manager – Deal Leader), Weronika Przybylska (Investment Associate – Deal Team Member) and Michał Lasota (Lead Transaction Lawyer) was responsible for the transaction.
– We strongly believe that by combining the technology of personalization with the D2C + subscription business model, the Sundose team has the potential to revolutionize the dietary supplement market. For two years in a row, the founders managed to demonstrate an impressive 500% revenue growth and hire a very competent group of managers, which created an excellent basis for taking the company to the next level – assesses Grzegorz Żebrowski, Investment Manager at ARIA.
This is the third round in Sundose’s history. Between 2017 and 2020, the company raised a total of over $3 million from domestic and foreign VC funds and accelerator programs. These enabled it to not only continue to develop the product itself, but also to start expanding into foreign markets. In 2020, the company entered the UK and German markets with its product. According to Sundose’s founders, the $6 million raised in Round A funding will allow the company to further develop its personalization engine and expand its operations into more European markets.
Consumers currently spend around US$140 billion per year on supplements, and it is estimated that the global supplement industry will grow to US$230 billion by 2027. With such a dynamically changing environment, Sundose is currently in a very intense phase of development, and its solution based on a personalized approach to the real needs of the human body has a significant impact on the changes taking place in this market segment.
Michał Gołkiewicz, co-founder of Sundose said, “Our mission is to provide customers with the unique supplement formulation that completely matches their individual needs. We achieve this through our proprietary personalization engine, which tailors the ideal combination of nutrients for each customer based on the latest nutritional research. The finished product is a daily sachet with a unique nutrient mix from our selection of over 40 vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, probiotics and adaptogens. We can, quite literally, offer billions of unique end products to our customers.”
The product personalization and digitization, combined with deep diagnostic data are not only drivers of the business, but factors that will increasingly shape the supplement market long into the future.
Tomasz Styk, co-founder of Sundose said, “As an exclusively digital company, we are able to offer a level of personalization that is simply not possible in the physical retail world. We believe that in the near future, individualized supplementation will become as common as personalized diets, workouts or treatments.”
According to the company’s data, in 2020, sales revenue increased seven times compared to 2019, and in November 2020 alone, the bottom line was 300% higher compared to January 2020. The intense growth rate exhibited by Sundose resulted in not only new investors joining the latest A round, but also those participating in previous financings. Thus, they not only increased their commitment to the company, but also confirmed their trust and confidence in Sundose’s business potential.
The main direction of Sundose’s development in 2021 is to focus on the key aspect of the product, which is the personalization engine. The company plans to incorporate medical diagnostics into customized compound formulations. It is also working on an interface for mobile devices. It will allow the customer to modify the formulation by updating his or her history with their phone and a few clicks.