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Social commerce start-up DealShare became the latest unicorn at a valuation of over $1.6 billion after raising $165 million in the first close of its Series E fund raise. New investors Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital, and Unilever Ventures participated in the round, along with existing investors Tiger Global and Alpha Wave Global (Falcon Edge).
The fresh capital will be utilised to invest in technology and data science. The company is also looking at a ten-fold expansion in its logistics infrastructure and to increase geographic reach. In addition, it will establish a sizable offline store franchise network.
DealShare currently operates over 100 warehouses in the 10 states it operates in, and plans to expand its warehousing from 2 million square feet today to 20 million square feet over the next 12 months. The company expects to hit $1billion in revenues in the near term and is currently seeing annual revenue run rate of over $600m
Avendus was the exclusive financial advisor to the transaction.
Vineet Rao, Founder & CEO of DealShare, said: “DealShare is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies in India. Our revenues and customer base have grown 13 times in the last year with improving profitability. With a strong customer base of over 10 million, we have expanded our geographical presence to over 100 cities across 10 states. Our company has created job opportunities for over 5,000 persons across the country.”
He added, “We have created a network of over 1,000 community leaders under our flagship program, DealShare Dost, enabling an efficient and highly scalable supply chain. We will be utilizing the proceeds from the round to invest heavily into technology, improving the supply chain, and expand our footprint throughout the country. We will also invest in acquiring best-in-class technologies and marquee brands that are focused on the mass market.”
Griffin Schroeder, Partner, Tiger Global said “As it expands into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, DealShare is well positioned to power a new wave of e-commerce growth in India.”
Founded by Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora, and Rajat Shikhar in 2018, the three-year-old start-up has built a network of more than 1000 small and medium manufacturers in the grocery and essential space.
Medda Founder and Chief Business Officer, DealShare, said, “This year, we will be expanding our presence to well over 200 cities across 20 states and are setting an audacious goal to increase our annual revenue run rate to $3 billion while becoming operationally profitable. We also aim to add close to 50 million new consumers in the next 12 months.”
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