Two-year-old online shopping marketplace ShopClues.com plans to raise a fourth round of funding between $75-100 million to support its growth trajectory.
The company raised $15 million in two rounds of funding last year from Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners and more recently a third round of an undisclosed amount.
Radhika Ghai Aggarwal, co-founder and CMO, ShopClues.com, told
Since launch, ShopClues.com has wooed 85,000 merchants to sell on its site, offering a product catalogue of 10.5 million items; and it has 5 million registered users.
The company notched up ₹1,500 crore in gross merchandise value or sales in end-October, two months before its targeted date and is all set to hit the ₹3,000-crore mark by March 31st, 2015.
Sanjay Sethi, co-founder and CEO of ShopClues.com, claims ShopClues does more business than eBay does in India. Sethi was global product head for shipping & logistics, payments & billing for eBay in the US before he quit to start ShopClues.
“ShopClues provides a bazaar-like shopping experience for middle-class Indians whose annual income is between ₹2 lakh and ₹ 9 lakh a year, unlike other popular e-commerce sites that offer mall-like shopping experiences. Shoppers can pick up mobile phone accessories, conversion plugs, and artificial jewellery etc for less than ₹250 along with more expensive items,” said Radhika Ghai Aggarwal, co-founder and CMO, ShopClues.com.
The average selling price of a fashion product on the site is ₹500; it is under ₹300 for shoes. Overall, average selling price on the site is ₹1,250.
Buoyed by the success of its Diwali sale that saw ₹6 crore in sales, the company is launching a TV ad campaign next week with the tagline ‘Sab kuch wholesale rate pe’ for the Christmas and New Year shopping season. “We are launching the ‘Black Friday’ sale on November 28 when we offer great deals, on the lines of Black Friday in the US, held on the fourth Friday of November every year,” said Ghai.
Currently, 65 per cent of the sales on ShopClues comes from Tier-2 and -3 cities; the best selling category is Fashion & Lifestyle followed by Home & Kitchen which together account for 60 per cent of sales. The company has four fulfilment centres — two in Delhi and one each in Mumbai and Jaipur averaging 1,500 sq feet. Over the next 12 months, it plans to add 20 fulfilment centres around the country.
“Our fulfilment centres are not warehouses to store inventory, they are centres where products to be sold are brought, inspected, packed and shipped within 8 hours flat, unlike other e-commerce players who store inventory,” said Ghai.
Delivery is done in 3-7 working days through tie-ups with 25 courier companies. The company has a 500-strong team, of which 69 are part of the product management and technology team. “We are a technology company offering a service to customers, and therefore, we need to ramp up our product management and technology team,” said Sethi.