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India-based wellbeing brand What’s Up Wellness has raised equity funding of INR 14.40 crore (approx. $1.73 million) in its latest seed funding round. The funding round was led by new investor Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of FMCG major Unilever. It also saw participation from some of What’s Up Wellness’ existing angel investors. The wellbeing company said it plans to put the funding towards increasing its team, furthering growth and scaling efforts, and developing new products. What’s Up Wellness offers various types of gummy supplements to make wellness “fun and easy," including beauty gummies for hair, skin and nails; sleep gummies for muscle recovery and nerve relaxation; stress relief gummies; and gummies for children. In 2022, the company raised an angel funding round, including co-founders of consumer brands such as Sirona Hygiene and Clovia. What’s Up Wellness was shortly featured on Shark Tank India, where it secured cumulative funding of INR 60 lakhs (approx. $72,199). Sayantani Mandal and Vaibhav Makhija, co-founders of What’s Up Wellness, said: “We are delighted and proud to announce our seed fundraising round led by Unilever Ventures. This is yet another significant milestone in our journey of building What’s Up Wellness as a trailblazer for the D2C wellness and nutrition space in India.” They continued: “It motivates our team to double down on the ongoing efforts to build the best wellness brand out there, with strong attention to detail on what today’s customers want. Furthermore, we hope to gain immense learnings, invaluable insights, best practices, and benchmarks, from the journeys of Unilever Ventures’ portfolio companies worldwide". “From the business perspective, we at What’s Up Wellness have witnessed accelerated growth over the last year....Going forward, we intend to keep scaling and fast-tracking the growth, while continuing to maintain a tight grip on our bottom line and introducing more highly relevant products. In doing these things, our end goal shall always remain constant – to make wellness fun and frictionless for users.” Pawan Chaturvedi, partner of Asia at Unilever Ventures, said: "Investing in What’s Up Wellness is in line with our strategy of supporting and investing in promising indie brands in the health and wellness space. India presents a large opportunity for the wellness segment, and What’s Up Wellness, with its innovative and modern formats, aims to capture this fast-transforming market. We are excited to be early supporters of What’s Up Wellness in their next growth phase.”