Udaan raises USD 280m in additional financing from existing and new investors

The financing highlights the immense potential of the Indian b2b e-commerce market and market-fit of Udaan's business model to the Indian trade market. The existing investors of Udaan - Lightspeed Venture Partners, DST Global, GGV Capital, Altimeter Capital, and Tencent – participated in the funding exercise, in addition to two new investors - Octahedron Capital and Moonstone Capital. The additional financing exercise takes the overall fund raised by Udaan till date to $1.15 billion. 

The additional funds will be deployed towards continued market creation of b2b eCommerce in India, reaching out to more and more small businesses across the country and bringing benefits of e-commerce to them. Some of the key areas of investment will be continued expansion of selection of products and categories available on Udaan, furthering user experience, enhancing technology platform, expanding our SME financing capabilities and reinforcement of the supply-chain infrastructure. 

Udaan is India's largest b2b e-commerce platform with operations across categories, including lifestyle, electronics, home and kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, FMCG, pharma, toys and general merchandise. 

Udaan enables small manufacturers, farmers and brands to market and sell their products across the country. While doing so, it enables shopkeepers, kirana stores, restaurants, street vendors, chemists, offices, small factories, contractors etc. to source from a large selection of high-quality products at the best prices with the convenience of e-commerce. 

Commenting on the development, Amod Malviya, Co-founder, Udaan, said, "Covid-19 has accelerated the already fast digital-led evolution of highly fragmented and unorganized Indian trade/ retail industry. While at the same time, the pandemic also highlighted unique structure of Indian economy, with millions of kiranas and neighbourhood stores becoming the lifeline of our country at the time of crisis. 

"Udaan is at the forefront of this uniquely Indian e-commerce opportunity, emerging in the last four years as one of the largest e-commerce platforms in India, while taking an India-first mobile-first approach to e-commerce. This financing enables us to further our journey of taking e-commerce to the depth and breadth of the country, with udaan's unique low-cost model for core middle India." 

The Indian market has a large number of small and medium businesses across both manufacturing and trade (100M+ farmers, 15M+ small manufacturers, and 30M+ traders, retailers and service businesses). Mobile technology is enabling access for these businesses at an unprecedented speed. It is creating a unique opportunity to leverage the internet to bring scale and professionalisation to both supply and trading e-commerce, that is native-fit for the Indian market. 

Udaan's marketplace has strategically focused on this trend, facilitating efficient, transparent and convenient transactions by enabling low and best price, highest quality and widest selection to its network of over three million users in 900 cities by connecting them to over 25,000 sellers across the country.