Ace Blend Gets $9.9M to Test Supplements and Launch New Products

D2C nutrition brand Ace Blend has raised $9.9 Mn (~₹95 Cr) in a Series A2 round led by 3one4 Capital, with existing backer Fireside Ventures doubling down on its earlier bet.

What stands out here isn’t just the amount it’s the 3x jump from Ace Blend’s last round, closed barely over a year ago. And the money isn’t going into marketing spend or influencer campaigns, the usual D2C playbook; it’s earmarked for clinical trials to back up what the brand’s supplements actually claim to do.

That’s a deliberately slower, more expensive bet in a category where most competitors ship fast and market faster.

The Details

• Round size $9.9 Mn (~₹95 Cr), Series A2
• Lead investor 3one4 Capital
• Also participating Fireside Ventures (existing investor, increasing its stake)
• Previous round $3.3 Mn pre-Series A/seed, led by Fireside Ventures (July 2025)
• Implied jump Roughly 3x the size of its last round, raised in just over a year
• Valuation Not disclosed

Why Most D2C Nutrition Brands Skip This Step

Founded in 2018 by Shivam Hingorani, with Saif Mehkri joining as cofounder in 2022, Ace Blend sells dietary supplements across heart health, brain health, sleep, gut health, strength and immunity.

Its portfolio runs about 14 SKUs plant-based protein powders, superfood mixes, and functional health supplements.

Here’s the detail that matters: most of India’s D2C nutrition category runs on contract manufacturing, where a brand just slaps its label on a formula made by a third party. Ace Blend builds its own formulations instead a harder, costlier path, but one that lets it actually stand behind clinical claims later.

The Growth Numbers Behind the Raise

Ace Blend says it grew 300% in FY26, with a repeat purchase rate of nearly 46-48% a genuinely strong retention number for a supplements brand, where repeat purchase is usually the hardest metric to crack.

High repeat rates in nutrition D2C typically signal one thing: customers are actually seeing results, not just buying once and churning. That’s likely the real reason 3one4 Capital led this round at 3x the previous size.

Where the Capital Is Actually Going

The fresh funds will fund clinical trials, R&D, supply chain upgrades, and new nutrition formats.

Ace Blend is also building automated batch testing to check nutritional accuracy, pesticide residues and heavy metals plus shelf-stability studies run at launch and again six months later.

This is infrastructure spending, not growth-hacking spending a meaningfully different capital allocation than most D2C brands make at this stage.

What This Bet Is Really About

Betting a Series A2 on clinical trials instead of customer acquisition is a contrarian call in India’s D2C nutrition space, where CAC-driven scaling is the default playbook. The risk is obvious: clinical trials are slow, expensive, and don’t move revenue in the short term. But the payoff, if it works, is a genuine moat — most supplement brands can be copied overnight; a verified clinical claim can’t be. The real test is whether Ace Blend can keep its 300% growth rate while funnelling capital into R&D instead of discounts and influencer deals.

The Bottom Line

Ace Blend is betting that trust, not reach, is what scales a nutrition brand in India the next 12-18 months of trial data will say whether that bet pays off.