Online marketplace ShopClues.com has announced that it has raised a fresh round of funds led by sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd, with participation from existing investors Tiger Global Management LLC and Nexus Venture Partners, at a valuation of more than USD1.1 billion
Although the company did not disclose the amount raised, a report by Mint estimates the investment to be around USD110-140 million.
The money raised will be used to focus on building new products to enable the SME merchants to digitize their business and to further entrench itself as the e-commerce operating system on the cloud, the company said in an official statement.
ShopClues also said that this is its last round of fund raising and its future plans include an IPO.
“Today, we are the dominant player in low price-point & unstructured categories like lifestyle, home, kitchen, electronic & automotive accessories etc. Our focus on selection, value and trusted shopping for Indian middle class consumers has given us tremendous scale with a rapidly growing buyer & merchant network. We are confident that our capital efficiency & execution will make this our last fund raise before we become profitable with the eventual IPO in 2017,” Radhika Aggarwal, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer, ShopClues said.
ShopClues, which counts the Indian middle-class looking to buy unbranded goods as its target clientele, currently ships over 3.5 million items and gets over 100 million visitors a month. The company has 350,000 sellers on its platform with 80-85% sellers live at any point of time. The e-tailer said its gross merchandise value (GMV, or the cost of goods sold) has grown over four times since January 2015 and that it expects to be profitable by the first half of 2017.
With an increased focus on customer experience, the idea of the Surety program is to guide and assure customers in their buying journey and facilitate the best in class experience
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