Amazon Brand Owner Heyday Raises $555 Million in Funding Round

(Bloomberg) -- Heyday, a platform that buys and builds consumer brands that sell on Amazon.com Inc., raised $555 million in a funding round led by Raine Group and Premji Invest, the investment firm controlled by Indian tycoon Azim Premji. 

Existing investors including General Catalyst, Victory Park Capital and Khosla Ventures also participated in the Series C financing, Heyday said in a statement Tuesday. 

Heyday is valued at more than $1 billion after the deal, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. 

Heyday acquires consumer-goods companies that sell products on Amazon and aims to improve their design, production and marketing. It has also started its own brands.

Thrasio Holdings Inc., another so-called brand aggregator, raised $1 billion in a funding round led by Silver Lake last month. Thrasio was valued at over $5 billion in that fundraising, Bloomberg News reported. 

Heyday Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Sebastian Rymarz said that well as helping brands make their businesses more professional, Heyday also offers platforms for brands to sell products directly to consumers or establish a brick-and-mortar presence. 

“We’re acquiring and we’re also incubating brands that are marketplace native,” Rymarz said in an interview, adding that the company is partnering with some celebrities to launch new products. 

“What we’re doing is trying to help them make what we’re calling ‘the great leap’ from Amazon to household brand,” he said.

Founded in 2020, San Francisco-based Heyday raised $70 million in a series B funding round in May. It also has offices in China, India and the Philippines. 

Alongside the funding round, Heyday announced the appointment of three executives to fuel international expansion. Navid Veiseh, a former executive at Amazon and Korean e-commerce site Coupang Inc., has been hired as chief financial officer, while Reema Batta was named chief marketing officer and Todd Heeter becomes chief accounting officer. 

The new funding will allow the company to buy new brands, invest in the team that creates new brands, and pursue international expansion, said Mark Crane, a partner at General Catalyst who’s also a board member at Heyday. 

“It gives us that time to ultimately be able to expand and think very thoughtfully about how we’re going to go into other geographies,” said Crane.

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