Unilever Buys Into Inner Beauty

When multinationals start investing, the promise of nutritional beauty supplements is turning into a reality. Nutrafol, a nutraceutical supplement for healthy hair growth for men and women, has closed its series A financing round. Unilever Ventures, the venture-capital and private-equity arm of consumer packaged goods conglomerate joined as lead investor after an initial introduction from investment platform CircleUp.


According to Nutrafol, the company's founders were frustrated by poor results and undesirable side effects from a leading pharmaceutical hairloss drug. They challenged the science behind conventional hair loss solutions and in 2015 they teamed up with world-renowned hair loss experts in the field of dermatology and integrative healthcare to develop a nutraceutical hair growth supplement composed of clinically-tested ingredients. With continued investment in research and clinical studies, Nutrafol is poised to take the lead in the fragmented multibillion dollar global hair loss industry.


“Up until now, physicians have had very few, if any, healthy options to offer patients concerned with poor hair health,” says Nutrafol President Roland Peralta. “Our researchers created an award-winning solution that fills the void by providing the medical community a healthy and effective option, without side effects, for their patients in the treatment of poor hair health.”


“By leveraging the latest discoveries in hair research and biotechnology, we reverse engineered a formulation to target many underlying causes of hair loss, which our competitors fail to address,” remarks Giorgos Tsetis, C.E., the CEO of Nutrafol. “We now know poor hair health is due to an accumulation of causes, including stress, inflammation and hormonal imbalances. We live in a time when these causes, particularly stress, are on the rise in modern society, which explains why hair loss is a global epidemic. It's a multibillion dollar category with a double-digit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) projected in the coming years, making this a very lucrative opportunity for our investors.”


Executives at Unilever Ventures agrees with those predictions.


“Hair loss is a global issue affecting millions of men and women every day. The founding team at Nutrafol, a nutraceutical supplement, has done a phenomenal job disrupting the status quo of the hair loss industry by shifting the paradigm in how western medicine talks about hair loss,” says Stephen Willson, investment director, Unilever Ventures. “Consumers are demanding natural solutions that work—the high trajectory growth of the brand is indicative that Nutrafol is on the frontier of that.”


Investment from Unilever Ventures, along with other strategic partners, will be used by Nutrafol to progress scientific research, product development and drive growth in the medical, salon and e-commerce channels.