India based social e-commerce start-up DealShare has raised $144 million in its latest Series D funding round as it aims to expand its business in the South Asian market and make an entry in international markets.
Marking the third funding for the company in the last seven months, with its valuation increasing nine-fold to $455 million within two-and-a-half years, the latest funding round was led by New York venture fund Tiger Global and co-led by WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation, and Z3Partners. It also included partners of DST Global, Matrix Partners India, and Alteria Capital. To date, DealShare has raised a total of $183 million.
“We believe India is a unique market with its highly diverse demographics and requires an indigenous model that is built based on first principles and differentiates itself from western and Chinese e-commerce models,” said Vineet Rao, CEO, and founder, DealShare.
The three-year-old DealShare has come a long way from when it was a simple e-commerce platform on WhatsApp offering hundreds of products to consumers. Selling daily essentials (mainly groceries) and targeting the middle-income demographic, the start-up has already onboarded 3 million customers and delivered 1 lakh orders a day.
Amazon and Flipkart, while massively popular in India, still feel like foreign concepts to a vast majority of the country, which continues to rely heavily on offline modes for its shopping needs. This is where DealShare comes in with its vernacular solution, curated especially for the needs of the Indian population, which is going online at a rapid pace.
The proceeds from the funding round would be used to ramp up the company’s operations, invest in AI-driven innovations in its user experience, and build its team. DealShare also has plans to launch a tech hub in the UAE and is currently establishing its first base in Abu Dhabi. In the future, it plans to export products from its regional brands to the country and later launch its direct-to-consumer business.
Rao said that DealShare’s monthly active users used the app over 40 times a month, making it the most engaging e-commerce app, adding that they would continue to add more innovative capabilities and services to serve a wider range of user needs. “We will also invest in improving and scaling up our operations rapidly. We expect our footprint to increase from current 20 warehouses across 5 states to over 200 warehouses across 10 states by end of this year.”
“We plan to strengthen our network further and increase it to 5000+ by this year-end. Along with this, we are planning to fuel the growth by building State-of-the-art technology and infrastructure-related assets which will ensure efficiency,” said Sankar Bora, Founder, Chief Operation Officer, DealShare.
“We are confident of hitting a $1 billion GMV (gross merchandise value) run rate by end of the year, thereby building a strong 10 million customer base. We currently serve 40 cities and towns across 5 states and will increase our footprint to 100 cities and towns and 10 states by year-end,” Sourjyendu Medda, co-founder, chief business officer, and CFO, DealShare said.
