Exclusive: Alteria Capital Backs Dunzo With Venture Debt And Series C Investment

Bengaluru-based hyperlocal services enabler Dunzo has continued to cash in on multiple investors’ interest as it further diversifies and expands its services. Inc42 noted in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings that the latest investment for the startup has come in from venture debt provider Alteria Capital.

A debt of INR 13 Cr for 1300 non-convertible debentures at a value of INR 10 Lakh has come in August from Alteria Capital through Milestone Trusteeship Services. Prior to this in July, Alteria Capital through Milestone had picked up 1,417 Series C CCPS at a nominal value of INR 55 with a premium of INR 52872.20 worth INR 7.49 Cr.

It is notable that Alteria Capital has been offering only venture debt and has made equity or preference investments in rare occasions. Last year in August, Raw Pressery raised $4.8 Mn (INR.33.5 Cr) across equity and venture debt from Alteria. At the time, Vinod Murali of Alteria had said that 10% of the investments from the fund will be made in equity of selected companies.

Further, an interesting revelation of Dunzo’s filings was INR 7.49 Cr credited to company’s account by Blume Ventures on July 24 itself. However, there has been no document filed in this regard by the company. For the uninitiated, a company has to file PAS 3 for every investment that gets credited to its account.

In response to an Inc42 query, a Dunzo spokesperson said, “With regards to any funding news, we at Dunzo have constantly wanted to steer the narrative and conversation in the ecosystem to a better product, user experience and what makes a dent in the business.”

Ankur Aggarwal, Dalvir Suri, Mukund Jha, and Kabeer Biswas founded Dunzo in 2015. The AI-driven chat-based hyperlocal services app lets users create to-do lists and collaborate with partners (vendors) to get them done. The company charges delivery based on the distance between the store and delivery for between INR 20-INR 100, depending on a number of factors.

Prior to this, the company has raised over $30.7 Mn funding and is already receiving investments as part of the Series C funding round, which is yet to be closed. Here are a few recent updates by Dunzo:

• In the last 18 months, Dunzo claims to have grown 30x and is expecting to service upwards of 2 Mn orders per month by June’19
• The company claims that Dunzo has a repeat user rate of 80% and a transaction frequency of 5 orders per month per user
• The company aims to get micro-market profitable at an order level in the next quarter
• The company expanded its services to the B2B segment as it launched Checkout with Dunzo option

The company filings revealed that it aims to be profitable by FY2023. Dunzo’s biggest competitor right now is Swiggy, which forayed into the delivery of an on-demand hyperlocal category, from flowers and vegetables to health and supplements, with the launch of ‘Swiggy Stores’ integrated within the app.  However, another Hyderabad-based player, Mapprr, has been functioning to compete in the hyperlocal space.

A report by market research firm Ken Research, has predicted that the Indian hyperlocal market will grow to reach over $317.4 Mn (INR 2,306 Cr) by 2020.