Jaipur, 10 Oct. 2019: DealShare, the leading social commerce startup, announced that it has raised$11 Million across Series A and seed rounds of funding led by Matrix Partners India & Falcon Edge Capital. The round also saw participation from partners of DST Global, Omidyar Network India and few leading angel investors.
The startup commenced operations in September last year and focuses on middle and lower-income population belonging to non-metro, Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities. It is currently serving more than 3lac customers in the cities of Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Surat, Baroda, Kota, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Sikar, Sawai Madhopur and Nagaur. It is also planning to expand its footprint into Maharashtra by the end of this month, thereby, making it one of the fastest-growing start-ups in the country. The startup which sells grocery and household essential products through social virality model intends to rapidly scale up operations across India. The fresh funds will be utilized for city expansion, developing artificial intelligence based solutions and indigenous logistics network. DealShare will expand into 100 cities across more than 10 states in the next one year and is expected to raise more funds very soon.
DealShare was founded by five dynamic entrepreneurs possessing almost 100 years of combined experience – Vineet Rao is the CEO &Head of Technology, Sourjyendu Medda is the Chief Business Officer & Head of Sourcing, Sankar Bora is COO & Head of Marketplace, Rishav Dev is Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Logistics arm and RajatShikhar is the Chief Product Officer. Vineet is a former Microsoft techie, Sourjyendu wasSales HeadatMetro Cash & Carry India, Sankar BorawasCo-founder &VP Operations atMyntra, Rishav Dev was VP Operations at Grofers andRajatShikhar was Chief Product Officer atFoodpanda. Between the five of them, they possess the diverse experience required to create a successful e-commerce story in the country.
Commenting on the growth of DealShare, Vineet Rao, Chief Executive Officer & Head of Technology said: “We are in the process of creating the biggest e-commerce story of India. E-commerce 1.0 focused on bringing the western model to the country and brought in a lot of investments and infrastructure. However, those models were mostly focused on top tier population residing in Metro cities. Indian consumers living in tier 2 & below cities have long been missing out on the negotiating ability it possesses attributing to the huge population, due to lack of tools for collective buying. DealShare solves this unique problem through its app where users are able to consolidate the buying requirement among their friends and relatives and place orders on the app. This, in turn, enables us to do a backward integration with suppliers and manufacturers for sourcing at the best rates. The latest funding will also give us the impetus to strengthen our asset-light, low-cost and highly efficient logistics model. We plan to strengthen & leverage the local economy and entrepreneurs through our flagship programs such as DealShare Dost (last-mile supply chain) and DealShare Dukaan (O2O store model), eventually empowering them financially and reducing our operating costs while increasing the overall efficiency.”
Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder and Partner of Falcon Edges said: “Falcon Edge is excited to help drive DealShare’s mission of meeting the daily needs of an under-served customer base of 500m first time internet users. DealShare brings together a focused assortment that is differentially procured. This, when coupled with the delight of discovery and a gamified shopping experience, drives robust repeat usage and cohort behaviour. These factors coupled with creative, first principles driven fulfillment to drive exciting unit economics. We believe this ability to grow rapidly while demonstrating robust unit economics this early in a lifecycle is rare indeed.”
The main motto of DealShare is “Buy more, save more and buy with friends and save even more” due to which it focuses on the next 500 million new internet users who have recently come online. It is a platform that offers products of daily use such as snacks and other food items including fruits, vegetables, and dry fruits, FMCG products such as lotions, soaps, cleaning liquids, etc., as well as household merchandise such as linen, buckets, and mops. Products are sourced directly from local manufacturers & suppliers and every item on DealShare is offered at deep discount, with buyers able to gain further price reductions when they engage in group buying with friends and family members.
Announcing Maharashtra launch, Sourjyendu Medda, Chief Business Officer and Head of Sourcing said“In just one year of operations, we have serviced more than 1.5 million orders from 3 lac consumers. Majority of our customers have got introduced to e-commerce through DealShare. WhatsApp was the only application they were using regularly before DealShare. We focus heavily on the simplified user interface, the local language, social virality and local suppliers. These pillars allow us to penetrate deeper into smaller cities and towns as no e-commerce or modern trade company has done before. With the opening of Maharashtra &other states and further penetration into Rajasthan and Gujarat, we are confident of hitting a 5million customer base in six months who will buy with us multiple times a month! Our unique demand aggregation model also allows us to do B2B with a number of traders very effectively. We are in the process of converting some of our loyal trader customers to DealShare Dukaans (O2O store model) to service our end consumers more efficiently. This is E-commerce 2.0 for Bharat.”
“It is still day 0 for e-commerce in India. The DealShare team has a deep understanding of consumer buying behaviour and a unique model that caters to the largest chunk of consumers in India, middle- and lower-income households. It’s a pleasure to partner with Vineet, Sourjyendu, Sankar, Rishav and Rajaton this journey.” commented Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India
