ShopClues, a mass market online retailer has received a funding of $100 million led by Tiger Global. Notably, the portal turned down offers from the likes of others such as Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart and all these portals had been aggressive in trying to court down the three year old firm.
The deal was closed earlier this month and ShopClues is now valued at $350 million. The retailer includes the participation from the existing investors such as Nexus Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners. After including the recent funding, ShopClues has managed to raise over $115 million so far.
Regarding this, Radhika Aggarwal, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer at ShopClues said that they will be investing in technology, marketing and other things that will let them attract more sellers on their platform. The firm is aiming to be the largest platform aimed at the unstructured mass market, high margin product genres. ShopClues is in the plans of closing this fiscal at Rs 2,000 crore in gross merchandize volume and achieve a break even in mid 2016.
ShopClues enables small and medium sized merchants to carry out online transactions and it is positioned by itself as a marketplace for the buyers and sellers in smaller cities. ShopClues sells not much popular and unbranded items online, while the three famous e-commerce players including Snapdeal, Amazon and Flipkart have their prime focus on branded stuff.
Tiger Global Management’s partner, Lee Fixel said that the portal has emerged as a leader for over 1,00,000 small and local businesses that are seeking a platform to reach the mass consumers in the tier 2 and tier 3 Indian cities. He added that the entire team has done a great job when it comes to the local and regional brands and they are looking forward to expand their product catalogue.
As per various sources, the focus of ShopClues has made it a great buy for the big e-commerce players. Going by an investor of ShopClues, the firm is likely to be acquired for a few billion dollars gradually over time.
