In India’s crowded home and furniture market, Wakefit Innovations has carved out a brand around online mattresses, furniture, and home products. Now, as it prepares to go public, the company has quietly added another building block to its growth story.
Wakefit has raised $6.7 million in a pre-IPO funding round, bringing its valuation to around $770 million and further de-risking its upcoming listing.
A strategic pre-IPO raise — with GCC capital in the mix
This latest round is part of Wakefit’s broader plan to raise roughly $11.3 million ahead of its IPO, giving the company extra capital before it hits the public markets. Investors in the round include Bahrain-based Investcorp, DSP India Fund, and 360 ONE Equity Opportunities Fund, with the issue priced at about $2.35 per share.
Beyond the headline number, the cap table is telling: GCC-headquartered Investcorp, already an active player in Indian and MENA growth stories, continues to lean into India’s consumer and D2C wave — a trend that increasingly overlaps with MENA’s own retail and e-commerce evolution.
Financing an aggressive offline expansion
Wakefit’s IPO prospectus lays out ambitious expansion plans. The company intends to raise about $193.6 million through the IPO, including $56.4 million in fresh issuance, with a large share earmarked for physical retail.
Key priorities include:
- Opening 117 fully owned and operated stores, plus a flagship location in a key market.
- Funding rent, equipment, and store build-outs as the company deepens its omni-channel strategy.
- Supporting marketing and working-capital needs as Wakefit scales beyond its online-first roots.
In other words, the pre-IPO round is less about survival and more about positioning Wakefit as a national — and eventually international — household brand before it rings the bell on the stock exchange.
Why this matters for MENA
For founders and investors in MENA, Wakefit’s move intersects with several important themes:
- Cross-border capital flows: GCC institutional investors, especially those like Investcorp, are increasingly comfortable underwriting consumer-tech growth in India. That experience — in playbooks, governance, and exits — often feeds back into their MENA portfolios as well.
- D2C to omni-channel: Wakefit’s journey from digital-first to a dense physical footprint mirrors what many MENA D2C brands are contemplating: once online distribution hits a ceiling, controlled offline expansion becomes the next lever.
- IPO readiness as a discipline: Wakefit’s combination of pre-IPO capital, detailed deployment plans, and regulatory approvals offers a template for late-stage startups in emerging markets that are eyeing the public markets but still refining their balance sheet.
Editor’s Note — The Startups MENA Team
As India’s IPO pipeline gathers steam, MENA capital is increasingly part of the story — not just in fintech and SaaS, but in category-defining consumer brands like Wakefit.For founders in the region, Wakefit’s pre-IPO strategy offers a useful playbook: raise targeted capital to strengthen fundamentals, align expansion with public-market expectations, and invite long-term global investors onto the cap table early. Expect to see similar pre-IPO rounds from MENA startups as regional exchanges become more startup-friendly.
– By The Startups MENA Editorial Desk
