SUMMARY
Soma Capital, Goodwater Capital, Olive Tree Capital and Chris Golda Investments participated in the seed round of funding
Gobillion plans to launch services across 12 cities in the next 1.5 years
It was founded in 2020 by Roshan Farhan and Kulapradip Bharali
San Francisco-based social commerce platform Gobillion has raised a seed funding amount of $2.9 Mn led by Y Combinator, Justin Mateen, the founder of Tinder and Pioneer Fund.
Other investors who participated in the seed round of funding included Soma Capital, Goodwater Capital, Olive Tree Capital, Chris Golda Investments, Oliver Jung, Venture Souq, Shanti Mohan (founder-LetsVenture) and Vikas Choudhury (president, Reliance Jio).
Acacia Venture Capital Partners, Soma Ventures, Asymmetry Ventures, Dileep Thazhmon (founder-Jeeves), Vikalp Sahni (cofounder, Goibibo), Harsh Pokharna (founder- OkCredit) also invested in Gobillion in the round.
The startup plans to utilise the funds primarily to expand its business, launch more categories, and strengthen its operations, product development, and technology teams.
The startup also aims to build extensive social and gamified ecommerce experience that can cater to the customers in small towns in India and South-East Asia.
Roshan Farhan, founder and CEO, Gobillion, said, “We will be leveraging the capital to put our long-term plans into action and create a strong foundation for our business. The funds will help us invest in expanding our market, augment our tech and product capabilities, while doubling down on hiring of new talent across functions.”
Gobillion plans to launch its services across 12 cities in the next 1.5 years while scaling across 100 more cities in the upcoming four to five years.
Founded in 2020 by Roshan Farhan and Kulapradip Bharali, it is globally headquartered in San Francisco. In August, the startup had raised $125,000 from Y Combinator.
Growing Social Commerce Space In India
The social commerce space is fast-growing in India with companies like Meesho, YouTube-acquired SimSim, GlowRoad among several others.
Delhi-based social commerce startup Stage3 on December 8th, 2021 raised INR 20 Cr in a Pre Series A funding round led by Inflection Point Ventures and LC Nueva Investment Partners.
Walmart-owned ecommerce major Flipkart forayed into the social commerce space with Shopsy in July 2021. Recently, Shopsy has entered into the grocery segment.
In September this year, Bengaluru-based lifestyle social commerce startup Trell acquired Womaniya, a community focused on women’s self care, for an undisclosed sum. In July, DealShare raised $144 Mn in Series D from Tiger Global.
The gross market value of the segment is currently in the range of $1.5 Bn- $2 Bn and is expected to reach $60 Bn in 2030.
