In 2010, Supam Maheshwari had a new baby and a problem. The diapers, clothes and toys he wanted for his child were not easy to find in India. So whenever he travelled abroad on business, he packed suitcases with them and brought them home. The idea for FirstCry started in those suitcases.
Maheshwari had come a long way from a school called Apeejay and an engineering degree at Delhi College of Engineering, followed by a management diploma at IIM Ahmedabad. He was not new to building companies. In 2000 he and his friend Amitava Saha, who had studied at IIT Varanasi and IIM Lucknow, set up Brainvisa Technologies, an e-learning business. They sold it to Indecomm Global in 2007. The reported price varies by source, between about $16 million and $25 million.
The reported price varies by source, between about $16 million and $25 million.
That money did not make FirstCry easy. In 2010, about 90 percent of baby products were sold in physical shops. Few Indians used credit cards online, and fewer trusted a website with something as tender as a baby's skin. The stock was awkward too. Maheshwari has said that selling anything from a 5-gram diaper pin to a 25-kg car seat takes real expertise in logistics. The company launched from Pune in November 2010. SAIF Partners backed it with $4 million in April 2011.
What worked was admitting the internet alone would not be enough. In 2011 FirstCry began franchise stores in smaller cities. In 2013 it launched its own clothing brand, BabyHug. In 2016 it bought BabyOye from the Mahindra Group in a stock swap valued at ₹362 crore. Investors followed: Vertex, NEA, SoftBank with about $400 million, and later Azim Premji's investment arm.
The price of that scale is visible in the accounts. FirstCry listed on the NSE and BSE on 13 August 2024, with revenue of ₹6,481 crore in FY24 and a net loss of ₹321 crore. In June 2025 former stakeholders filed an insolvency plea against its subsidiary GlobalBees, a reminder that acquisitions come with their own tails. In the September 2025 quarter, FirstCry reported revenue of about ₹2,099 crore and trimmed its net loss to roughly ₹50 crore.
The lesson for founders is almost embarrassingly simple. FirstCry was not built on a market report. It began with one parent feeling a gap in his own home, and a co-founder who had already survived one company with him. The idea came first from need; the discipline of logistics and stores came later.