DealShare, a social e-commerce start-up, announced that it has raised Series C funding of $21 million led by WestBridge Capital, with participation from Alpha Wave Incubation — a venture fund managed by Falcon Edge Capital, Z3Partners and existing investors Matrix Partners India and Omidyar Network India .

This round also saw investment from select independent angel investors. With the current round, the total funds raised by DealShare in the last two years stands at $34 million.

Founded by Vineet Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora and Rajat Shikhar in late 2018, DealShare has built a differentiated e-commerce model that targets middle and lower income groups of over 500 million new-to-internet users. It procures products from local manufacturers and provides them with a platform to digitize their business and compete with leading national brands. At present, it has partnered with 1,000 brands of which 70 per cent are local and regional brands.

“This latest round of investment is a testament of our investors’ confidence in DealShare’s vision of bringing the e-commerce experience to the masses of India, especially to the low and mid-income population. We plan to use the funds to strengthen our technology platform and talent pool and scale our unique “Made-for-India” solution. Over the last two years, we have witnessed rapid adoption of our app in Tier 2, 3 cities and will continue with this growth journey” said Vineet Rao, founder and CEO, DealShare.

With 25,000 plus orders per day and an average basket value of ₹700, the start-up which is based in Bengaluru and Jaipur is already clocking gross annualised revenue of ₹350-400 crore with a capital investment of ₹50 crore over the last two years. It offers 2,000 products across staples, packaged foods and general merchandise which are highly relevant to households which fall under the ₹30,000-50,000 income bracket. It is present in over 25 cities and towns across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and NCR.

Targeting low, middle income groups

“With this round of investment, we will augment our brand presence across existing and new markets. Over the next one year, we are targeting to increase our footprint to 100 cities and towns across 5 States. Along with this, we will increase our customer base from 20 lakhs to 1 crore. This investment will take us to an annualised GMV of ₹2,500 crore by December 2021,” said Sourjyendu Medda, founder and Chief Business Officer, DealShare.

“We are excited to partner with DealShare on their journey to tap the untouched potential of the e-commerce business into the mass population of the country. The buying pattern of low- and middle-income group is different especially in smaller markets and DealShare seems to have understood the nuances very well. We are very impressed with how the team has scaled up in the last 2 years, while retaining a sharp focus on low cost, high impact model,” said Sandeep Singhal, co-founder and Managing Director, WestBridge.

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