Lightspeed Ventures Invests $3 Mn in Hyperlocal Discovery App Magicpin

Gurgaon-based hyperlocal discovery platform, Magicpin, has raised $3 Mn in Series A round of funding from existing investor, Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Through Magicpin, users and merchants, in a locality, can discover, interact and transact. It aims to create a social platform to help people connect and discover shops, restaurants or other services around them.

It makes use of real-time promotions, loyalty programmes and content updates to promote the merchants registered on its platform. For users, it offers features where they can take pictures and selfies to avail offers and discounts at stores.

Magicpin was founded in August 2015, by former Nexus Venture Partners VP, Brij Bhushan, and Anshoo Sharma, former Venture Partner at Lightspeed India Partners Advisors.

Quick Facts about Magicpin

• 30,000 Merchants listed on the platform
• 1,50,000 users
• Claims to have over 5,000 transactions a day
• Currently available in NCR, Jaipur and Bangalore

Magicpin is aiming to triple its transactions within the next six months. It also plans to expand to four new cities including Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Hyderabad.

The startup is a platform for merchants and brands to engage and provide personalised offers to their customers. The merchants pay a recurring platform fee and a per-transaction charge for the business that Magicpin drives to them.

Bejul Somaia, managing director at Lightspeed Ventures, said, “The two key drivers of the investment are the quality of the founders and the large opportunity in the hyper-local space. The firm has extensive learnings and insights from its early investments in LivingSocial (US) and DianPing (China) that inform our view of the correct strategy in India.”

The offline retail market in India is pegged to be about $1Tn by 2020. It includes merchants providing services like restaurants, fashion, spa, beauty, yoga, sports, gym, etc. The market is ripe to get disrupted as internet users in India move towards 600 Mn by 2018.

Magicpin was incubated by Lightspeed, which has investments in startups such as OYO, Craftsvilla, Qubole, FreshMenu, Shuttl, OneAssist, etc.

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