Bengaluru-based ecommerce startup 10i Commerce Services has raised $5 Mn in funding from Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani. With this fresh investment, the former chairman of the UIDAI has so far invested about $10 Mn in 10i Commerce in several tranches, according to a report by Mint.
Launched in 2015 by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois, 10i provides the same level of technology, logistics, sophistication and supply to a traditional small retailer, which ecommerce or organised retail gives. 10i’s flagship technology platform called ShopX, aims to help small brick-and-mortar retailers and neighbourhood stores across the country compete better with large online retailers.
As per a source close to the development, Nilekani is currently the sole major investor and owns a minority stake in 10i. As per Mint, both Nikelani and the founders refused to comment upon the development. The startup is also looking to close another round of funding from new investors over the next few months, added the source requesting anonymity.
The startup is also launching an open payments network next week that aims at helping customers transact digitally across any platform.
Commenting on the development, Amit Sharma, co-founder, 10i Commerce said, “What we are talking about is a payments service – and it’s a service which sits on top of various kinds of infrastructure in the economy – the infrastructure can be IMPS or UPI or the card networks such as Visa and MasterCard. The stand that ShopX has taken is that, there’s need for a payments service that utilises existing infrastructure and provides a seamless experience to customers and retailers.”
“Once a user has the ShopX consumer app, they can make a payment using any of these services. Let’s say, if a customer with a Paytm wallet comes to a retailer, our service will allow him to make a payment using his Paytm credit. And when we roll out the ShopX open payments service, in a sense we are therefore rolling out all the different standards in one go,” Sharma added.
Earlier in July this year, it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Nikelani.
Nandan Nilekani has been actively investing in early-stage startups. Nilekani has also backed startups like Rail Yatri, Systemantics, Fortigo, Team Indus, Mubble, Juggernaut, and Power2SME.
