Aditya Birla Group's TMRW invests ₹125 crore in Virat Kohil's Wrogn

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NEW DELHI:Aditya Birla Group’s fashion and lifestyle venture TMRW has invested ₹125 crore for a 16% stake in Universal Sportsbiz Pvt. Ltd (USPL), the Accel and Virat Kohli-backed parent of clothing brand Wrogn.The minority investment comes with “an option for a path to majority stake acquisition" later, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd said in an exchange filing on Wednesday.

In 2022-23, USPL earned a revenue of ₹344 crore, the company said in its filing. In a separete statement, TMRW said Wrogn could become a ₹1,500-crore brand in the next five years."With the partnership with TMRW, Wrogn is ready to unlock its next phase of omni-channel growth.

Apart from strengthening its leadership position on fashion platforms like Myntra, this partnership will help expand its offline footprint and provide impetus to scaling up the D2C business," TMRW said in the statement.Kohli is both an investor and a brand ambassador in Wrogn.“We are excited about this new collaboration that will bring all-round synergies to take Wrogn to the next level," said Mahendran Balachandran, partner at Accel, a veture capital firm.TMRW plans to become a house-of-brands enterprise exceeding the $1-billion benchmark in slaes in 5–7 years. Since its inception in 2022, the Aditya Birla group company has invested ₹289 crore in buying majority stakes in seven other direct-to-consumer (D2C) fashion brands: The Indian Garage Co., Bewakoof, Nauti Nati, Juneberry, Urnabo, Veirdo, and Nobero.The fashion and lifestyle space is India’s second-largest consumer category, valued at $110 billion, about 10% of which is online, according to a 2023 report by Bain & Co.