Hyderabad-based Palred Technologies, which owns and operates LatestOne.com — an e-commerce platform, has raised about ₹22 crore in the latest round. This fundraising round was led by Florintree Advisors, controlled by Mathew Cyriac, former co-head of Blackstone’s PE business in India, along with Chidambaram Palaniappan.
Ashish Dhawan, founder of Chrys Capital and an existing investor in the company for over 10 years, has also made an additional investment in the round. K Madhavan, joint MD of Star TV India, and Bharat Sheth, MD of Great Eastern Shipping, have also participated in this round of funding.
Palred Tech, which is listed on both NSE and BSE will allot shares to investors on a preferential basis at ₹145 a piece, diluting roughly 15% of the equity. The company owns and operates LatestOne.com, a vertically integrated e-commerce company and India’s largest e-tailor of mobile accessories.
With this latest capital infusion, the company will now use the funding for the general expansion of its e-commerce platform. Palem Shrikanth Reddy, chairman of the company said,
The funds would be used for additional fulfillment centres, brand building and inventory. We also need to invest more on creating our B2B ecommerce channel as it provides great potential for this niche vertical.
LatestOne.com has a quarterly net revenue of ₹12.5 crore with an investment of ₹30 crore so far. The company is said to be on its way to successfully reduce its ‘burn rate’. Commenting on this, Reddy said,
We are expecting a gross margin of 15% for the fourth quarter of the fiscal. The overall burn rate is expected to go below 10% of net revenue.
Palred Technologies, which was formerly known as Four Soft, sold its logistics software business to a portfolio company of Francisco Partners in 2014. The promoters of Four Soft, including Shrikanth Reddy, a postgraduate from Stanford University, retained a small portion of the proceeds to build LatestOne.com.
