Funding story
eCommerce marketplaces continue to rake in the dough in India. Recently, marketplace Shopclues raised over $100 million in Series E in a round led by GIC. GIC is the largest Singaporean sovereign wealth fund. Other participants in this round included existing investors Tiger Global and Nexus Venture Partners.
About Shopclues
Founded by Sandeep Aggarwal, Radhika Aggarwal and Sanjay Sethi, the Gurgaon-based startup raised $100 million in Series D last January, in a round led by Tiger Global. The home-grown unicorn was valued at $350 million last year, and its overall valuation has since tripled. The marketplace is run by Clues Network Pvt. Ltd., and it seeks to use the raised funding to build new products. These products will enable SME merchants to put up their offerings for sale on a single platform, streamlining the commercial transactions which they are involved in for their overall benefit. The greater aim of the Shopclues system is to create such a functioning network.
The Shopclues platform itself is extremely attractive and easy-to-use, and categorization has been ensured to simplify to enable customers to search for the products of their choice easily. Some of the more popular categories include appliances, computers, mobiles and tablets,footwear, sports and outdoors and products for kids, among others. Exciting offers are also highlighted everywhere. Merchant-specific offers are also indicated separately. Each category is also further divided into subcategories. For instance, sports, casual and formal shoes are offered under the Men’s footwear category, whereas flats, heels and sandals are offered for women. The overall range of products is thus very large, and attractive and accurate accompanying pics enable the user to seek the product of his choice.
Conclusion
Currently, the startup, which focuses on the urban middle class, ships over 3.5 million items on a monthly basis, while raking in over 100 million visitors per month. Its gross merchandise value has more than quadrupled since January. All signs point to a very bright future for this innovative concept.
Visit the Shopclues website here.
