Perelel has raised $27 million in a growth capital round led by Prelude Growth Partners to expand distribution and awareness.
The round takes the women’s supplement brand’s total funding to $39 million over three rounds and enlists Prelude, which the publication Puck recently christened “beauty’s new ‘it’ VC,” as a first-time investor. Earlier investors in Perelel that participated in the round include Unilever Ventures, Willow Growth Partners and Selva Ventures.
Co-CEO and co-founder Victoria Thain Gioia says the brand has over 12 months of profitability under its belt and wasn’t looking to raise more funds when she started taking meetings with Prelude co-founding partner Neda Daneshzadeh at Daneshzadeh’s request about a year ago. It was during lunch and coffee meetings with Daneshzadeh that Thain Gioia was persuaded Prelude, backer of OneSkin, Tower 28, DpHue and Blueland, would be a good fit for Perelel.
“They have done such an incredible job scaling CPG brands, wellness brands and really understood what we were building,” says Thain Gioia. “That was what made us want to take this next stage. She really understood the mission, the focus on the science, the clinical underpinning, being a women’s health brand and that opportunity there and how we’d been able to cut through the noise.”
She adds the round was an opportune moment to do a “cap table cleanup” and enable several of Perelel’s early angel investors, including former Glossier CMO Ali Weiss, former Jenni Kayne CEO Julia Hunter, model Rocky Barnes and “The Hills” star Whitney Port, to “take a great return for the bet that they made over the last five years.”
In August, Prelude announced it closed an oversubscribed second fund at $600 million. Its predecessor funds were $250 million in 2021 and $80 million in 2018. Daneshzadeh, former partner at L Catterton, and Alicia Sontag, former global president of beauty at Johnson & Johnson, established Prelude in 2018. Among its notable exits are Sol de Janeiro, acquired by L’Occitane in 2021, Summer Fridays, acquired by TSG Consumer last year, Naturium, acquired by E.l.f. Beauty in 2023, and Phlur, acquired by TSG Consumer Partners as well, but this year.
Los Angeles-based Perelel launched in September 2020 when Thain Gioia, an Olive & June and The Honest Co. alum, and co-founder Alex Taylor, a former president and executive editor in chief at Who What Wear owner Clique Media, were both pregnant. OB-GYN Banafsheh Bayati is a third co-founder. Perelel started with five vitamins for women across life stages, from conception through the three trimesters of pregnancy to postpartum and motherhood.
Today, the brand offers over 20 supplements for women, now through perimenopause, and men priced from $25 to $60 for a one-month supply. It’s gone beyond vitamins to greens and protein powders. Among the bestsellers are 1st Trimester Prenatal Pack, 2nd Trimester Prenatal Pack, 3rd Trimester Prenatal Pack and Conception Support Pack.
On its website, Perelel states that it’s run a 12-week randomized, placebo-controlled trial on its Conception Support Pack, a 12-week placebo-controlled trial on its Synbiotic Greens Powder and a 12-week single-arm pilot on its Hormonal Balance Support to validate claims. Its latest raise will finance further clinical studies.
Perelel is sold on Amazon, the biggest e-commerce player in supplements by far. Erewhon has been Perelel’s sole brick-and-mortar retail partner since 2022, when it created co-branded vitamin packs with the upscale Southern California grocer. Perelel’s prenatal vitamins are top sellers at Erewhon, according to Thain Gioia.
“We think of Erewhon as creating the wellness trends and seeing first what the consumer wants and where the consumer is going, especially in the health and wellness space,” she says. “It’s been a really good proof point for us that the brand, and what we’re doing is resonating.”
Market research firm Global Market Insights estimates the global women’s health supplement market will reach $66.5 billion by 2032, growing at a rate of 5.6% over the next seven years. In a crowded market, Perelel has a number of competitors such as Ritual, which closed a $25 million Series B round in 2019 and surpassed $250 million in net sales in 2024; MaryRuth Organics, which exceeded $250 million in revenue in 2023 and in 2024 saw founder MaryRuth Ghiyam repurchase a majority stake from Butterfly Equity; and Needed, which has raised more than $22 million across several funding rounds.
Perelel was focused on motherhood at the beginning, but its co-founders always envisioned it encompassing women’s health overall. Thain Gioia says, “We’re building into being that brand that can support women throughout their life stages with these medically backed, clinically researched solutions.”
