Plastic-Free Vegan Cosmetics Brand Secures 3 Million Dollars Investment

Sustainable beauty company Nohbo announced that it had raised $3 million in a Series Seed funding round. 

The funding round was led by Material Impact together with Safer Made and existing investor Mark Cuban’s Radical Investments.

Nohbo is combating plastic waste by eliminating single-use plastic bottles from personal care products.  

The startup developed vegan dissolvable drops for personal care products such as shower gels, shampoos, conditioners, and shaving creams. The products are encapsulated inside an innovative water-soluble membrane. 

Nohbo was founded by a young entrepreneur Benjamin Stern. Benjamin was only 16 years old when he received his first investment from billionaire Mark Cuban on Shark Tank TV show in 2016.   

The company will use the funding to scale up its manufacturing capacity and produce 15 million units per month. 

“There is a disturbing global addiction and dependence on single-use plastics. For personal care products alone, the US market consumes nearly 1,200 football stadiums worth of shampoo bottle waste annually,” said Ben Stern, Nohbo Founder & CEO. 

“The mantra of reducing, reusing and recycling simply isn’t enough anymore. Nohbo replaces the need for plastics outright in a novel format that we are all familiar with; pods. We’re thrilled to partner with investors like Mark Cuban, Material Impact, and Safer Made who individually and collectively possess the insight, experience and wherewithal to grow our business, all while making a substantial impact in the process.”

Material Impact, the Boston-based VC that led the Seed round, said:  “We are excited to join Nohbo’s mission to change the paradigm of how the hospitality industry and how individual consumers use personal care products in the 21st century,” said Adam Sharkawy, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Material Impact. “Single-use plastics are a menace to our environment. This is truly a material science innovation that is making a big impact on one of the largest culprits of plastic waste in our land and waterways.”

Nohbo sells its drops directly through the website and plans to offer subscriptions by the end of the year.

In “Shark Tank Update” aired on ABC Mark Cuban said: “Now that the product is ready for primetime, we are going to add consumer subscriptions. This literally could be a 100 million dollar enterprise over the next five to six years built around sustainability. There is nothing better than doing well by doing good!”