B2B Online Marketplace Udaan Raises $50 Mn From Lightspeed, Others

Bengaluru-based B2B online marketplace Udaan has secured $50 Mn in a Series B round of funding from Lightspeed US. Lightspeed Venture Partners India and funds associated with Russian billionaire Yuri Milner also participated in the round. Reportedly, Somaia and Ravi Mhatre from Lightspeed US led the recent investment.

The company will use the newly raised funding to add new sellers and buyers, expand its logistics network, hire more engineers and sales executives and launch new services like lending.

Earlier, in November 2016, the startup raised $10 Mn from Lightspeed Venture Partners India and Lightspeed US in a Series A funding round.

“We continue to be big believers in the team and market opportunity, and the company’s performance in terms of scale, growth dynamics, buyer/seller retention and frequency benchmarks to the best marketplace platforms we’ve seen globally,” said Lightspeed India Managing Director Bejul Somaia in a media statement.

Launched in 2016 by three former senior executives at Flipkart, Sujeet Kumar, Vaibhav Gupta, and Amod Malviya, Udaan runs a web platform connecting SMBs, manufacturers, wholesalers, traders, and retailers. It currently functions in two categories: mobile accessories and fashion products.

As claimed by the company, it has sellers across 80 cities and delivers to more than 500 cities with an average order value between INR 6K -7K.

“We’ve raised this round because we have validation that our product is working. The market opportunity is huge. We also account for more than 15-20% of the business of many of the sellers on the platform. And our average repeat transactions are seven times a month. These metrics are big validation that there’s massive demand for our kind of end-to-end marketplace,” said Sujeet.

The overall B2B market size is expected to be around $700 Bn by 2020, according to an April 2016 report by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Deloitte. Apart from Udaan, Other major B2B players operating online marketplace include Moglix, Bizongo, OfBusiness, Power2SME, Just Buy Live and more. Of late, B2B online marketplaces are gaining huge traction, raking in a few of the biggest funding rounds in the industry. Last year, where Gurugram-based Just Buy Live raised a $100 Mn round, Power2SME rakes in $36 Mn.

The development was reported by LiveMint.