B2B Ecommerce Unicorn Udaan Makes First Startup Investment In PetPooja

B2B ecommerce unicorn Udaan has invested in the restaurant billing platform PetPooja. This is the first startup investment made by Udaan.

The move is looked at as being in line with the company’s aspirations to scale up fresh foods and vegetable supply business to small and medium enterprises, this is the first startup investment made Udaan.

“In our journey to empower SMEs across India, it was inspiring to witness how PetPooja’s founders & team were doing the same for restaurants,” Amod Malviya, cofounder, Udaan told Inc42, while confirming the investment.

Headquartered in Ahmedabad, PetPooja was founded by Parthiv Patel in 2011. “Our mission is to digitize restaurants by building technology to streamline their operations to scale and make them more productive. We are excited to have Udaan as a partner in this journey of empowering millions of restaurants and other SMEs in India,” said Parthiv Patel, cofounder of PetPooja in a statement.

According to a TOI report, Udaan’s Singapore-based arm Trustroot Payment had invested around $2 Mn in the startup and the chances are that this investment would help China’s Tencent-backed Udaan to get a closer look at the data on what restaurant order cycles look like.

Udaan was founded by former Flipkart senior executives Sujeet Kumar, Vaibhav Gupta, and Amod Malviya in 2016. The unicorn connects small or medium-sized businesses (SMBs), manufacturers, wholesalers, traders, and retailers to sell goods and services to each other.

“We’re excited to contribute in their efforts towards this. With an investment like this and more, going towards bringing the power of technology to SMEs across the spectrum, the future is looking great for the SMEs of our country,” Malviya added.

Udaan also offers other services such as credit financing and logistics to connect manufacturers with retailers. Udaan’s logistics service, Udaan Express, delivers 65% of the company’s orders. Udaan claims to have 3 Mn retailers in 900 cities and over 20K onboard. The company also claims to have over 500 popular brand partners.

The ecommerce platform raised $585 Mn from Tencent, Altimeter, Footpath Ventures, Hillhouse, GGV Capital and Citi Ventures in October 2019. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and DST Global also invested in the round.  With this, the total funding raised by Udaan was $870 Mn.

“More than the capital investment, PetPooja’s data will help Udaan to understand the fresh supplies business better. They (Udaan) have been looking to scale up that line of business,” an unidentified source was quoted as saying by TOI.