Botanical-infused sparkling water brand Aura Bora announced today the closing of a series A funding round that brings its total lifetime financing north of $10 million. The raise was led by Siddhi Capital, with additional participation from Consumer Ventures, Gaingels, Seaside Ventures and Simple Food, as well as Waterloo co-founder Clayton Christopher.
The California-based company did not specify the exact size of the round, which is reportedly in the low eight-figure range. According to Crunchbase, the brand previously raised at least $2 million over two seed rounds in 2021 and May 2022. As well, Siddhi Capital co-founder and general partner Melissa Facchina, Christopher and industry veteran Brad Barnhorn have all joined Aura Bora’s board of directors.
Founded in 2019 by CEO Paul Voge and his wife Maddie Voge, Aura Bora produces a line of craft sparkling waters flavored with fruits and botanicals in flavors like Lavender Cucumber, Lemongrass Coconut and Cactus Rose. The brand is currently available in over 4,000 stores nationwide with around 50% ACV in the natural channel.
According to Voge, Aura Bora has worked with Siddhi Capital as an operations partner since 2020, but at the time the brand was too small to take investment from the firm. Since then, Voge said the brand has scaled revenue 30-40x and has gone from “launching in one to three new stores every month” to hundreds.
“We needed more capital to scale quickly … and we were tired of going at it alone,” Voge said. “The best part of getting institutional capital is you have people on your board, they own a percentage of your business, they are invested in your success.”
In addition to Siddhi – which has previously invested in brands like Beyond Meat, Magic Spoon and Hint – Aura Bora is also bringing in beverage expertise with Christopher and Barnhorn. Voge said he first met Christopher, also the founder of Sweet Leaf Tea and Deep Eddy Vodka, while participating in the SKU Accelerator in 2020 and has since worked with him to hone in Aura Bora’s distribution strategy.
Aura Bora currently has about 15 full time employees and Voge said the company is looking to use the financing to expand its sales and marketing team and is in the process of hiring a CFO. Voge, who prior to founding the brand worked in finance, noted that he has been learning the ropes of the beverage industry as Aura Bora has scaled and now aims to bring on more experienced professionals who can help take the brand to the next stage.
“I started selling this product out of my Subaru, I knew nothing about beverage,” he said. “Clayton and Brad are at one end of the spectrum, I’m at the opposite. And I’m trying to make sure that I continue to be the least impressive person on our team. So how can I continue to hire people that have a lot more beverage experience than me?”
Voge anticipates that Aura Bora will be in about 5,000 stores at the end of 2022. The company partnered with Sprouts as its first nationwide retail this spring, including offering its Grapefruit Elderflower flavor as a chain exclusive, and most recently launched in Safeway/Albertsons stores across the country. The company now aims to be in 10,000 locations next year, he added.
Conventional grocery stores – which currently accounts for about 1,800 doors – will be a key focus for Aura Bora. Voge said the brand has reported strong velocities in those accounts, mainly from refrigerated single-serving formats. Moving forward, it will begin to push multipacks on the dry shelf more as consumers increasingly use the product as a mixer and as a non-alcoholic alternative.
The company will also keep introducing new LTOs and seasonal flavor innovations, Voge said, which have been strong movers among loyal consumers in ecommerce. The success of the limited time strategy has also led the company to begin bringing back certain flavors, including Grapefruit Elderflower, initially an online exclusive before Sprouts requested it as a permanent addition, and this winter seasonal SKU Chai Cranberry.
As conventional becomes the target, Voge said he doesn’t intend to tone down Aura Bora’s approach towards dynamic flavors in hopes of attracting consumers seeking something different from typical category offerings.
“I think we will try to always straddle the line between being different, but not too different that it’s intimidating,” he said. “I think our Lime Cardamom flavor we’ve sold online would be a perfect fit in conventional, in that yeah, cardamom is not as known an ingredient, but lime is one of the most popular sparkling water flavors across all companies. So if we can continue to have some resemblance of the normal with a twist on it, that seems to be the secret sauce to getting conventional international consumers excited about our flavors.”