DealShare Raises $144 Mn Funding Total funding raised till date stands at $183 million

DealShare, a social e-commerce startup known for pioneering the community group buying (CGB) model in India, announced on Thursday that it has raised $144 million in its latest funding round. The round was led by Tiger Global and was co-led led by WestBridge Capital, Alpha Wave Incubation (a venture fund backed by ADQ, and managed by Falcon Edge Capital), and Z3Partners with participation from Partners of DST Global, Matrix Partners India, and Alteria Capital.

This transaction marks the third funding for the company in a span of seven months, with the valuation increasing nine-fold on the back of high growth momentum. With the current round, the total funding raised by DealShare stands at $183 million.

"We believe India is a unique market with its highly diverse demographics and requires an indigenous model that is built based on first principles and differentiates itself from western and Chinese e-commerce models. DealShare has pioneered this model with innovations in in-app experience and technology, direct from factory procurement, gamified and viral demand generation, and building a DealShare dost (community leader) network that enables DealShare to operate at the lowest cost operations in the world. We are proud to have a strong team of innovators who love to continually learn consumer behavior and solve hard business problems. This has enabled DealShare to rapidly grow to $200M GMV ARR. We would be utilizing the funds primarily to invest in AI-driven innovations in our user experience leading to a highly personalized, fun-filled and gamified experience. Our monthly active users already use our app over 40 times a month making it the most engaging ecommerce app and we will continue to add more innovative capabilities and services to serve a wider range of user needs. We will also invest in improving and scaling up our operations rapidly. We expect our footprint to increase from current 20 warehouses across 5 states to over 200 warehouses across 10 states by end of this year," said Vineet Rao, chief executive officer and founder, DealShare.

Founded by Vineet Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora and Rajat Shikhar, DealShare provides a sharp and curated assortment at highly competitive prices and has built an innovative community leader driven ultra-low-cost delivery mechanism collectively leading to best-in-class unit economics.

"We are excited to partner with DealShare as they grow the Indian E-commerce market. DealShare's unique approach combines discovery-led social sharing, group buying, and a gamified shopping experience with a simple consumer interface. They are well positioned to power the next wave of Indian ecommerce growth," commented Griffin Schroeder, partner, Tiger Global.

"The funds will be used to augment our current growth trajectory. In FY 20-21 fiscal, we grew fivefold to reach $200 million Annual GMV Runrate. In a short span of 2 years, we have serviced more than 3million consumers and over 20million orders. We are confident of hitting a $1 billion GMV Runrateby end of the year thereby building a strong 10 million customer base. We currently serve 40 cities and towns across 5 states and will increase our footprint to 100 cities & towns and 10 states by year end. Since the very first day, DealShare has been focused on developing indigenous brands across states and has enabled them to grow exponentially. We are the only retailer in the country building a unique and large network of local manufacturers in the grocery space enabling them to compete with large multi-national brands. We are truly aligned to further our country's mission of Make in India and the cherry on the top is that we are very close to breakeven," shared Sourjyendu Medda, founder, chief business officer and chief finance officer, DealShare.

"We are very impressed with the traction that DealShare has been able to achieve especially amongst first-time internet users in the hinterlands of the country. We are confident they will be able to scale up further with the new round of funding," noted Sandeep Singhal, co-founder, WestBridge Capital.

"We currently have over 1000 micro-entrepreneurs partners promoting the community group buying (CGB) model in the country thereby generating a massive amount of employment opportunities across all tiers of cities and towns. We plan to strengthen our network further and increase it to 5000 by this year-end. Along with this, we are planning to fuel the growth by building State-of-the-art technology and infrastructure-related assets which will ensure efficiency," stated Sankar Bora, founder, chief operation officer, DealShare.

"We invested in DealShare in its Seed days and have seen the company grow rapidly, while consuming minimal capital - a refreshing change in an industry plagued by heavy capital consumption. DealShare demonstrates best-in-class unit economics and capital efficiency (fivefold), while delivering a compelling value proposition to its customers, value-conscious middle Indians in tier-II and tier-III cities who crave local / regional products. DealShare is constantly iterating and improving its playbook of viral customer acquisition through group buying and gamification, while driving steady retention / cohort and unit economic improvements. DealShare's best in class fulfilment capabilities allows it to deliver this value proposition at attractive unit economics. Today, DealShare is a business that expects to break-even in the next 12 months. The Company will also expand internationally, starting with the UAE and is establishing its first base in Abu Dhabi. We are thrilled to continue backing DealShare, across rounds," said Navroz Udwadia, co-founder and chief executive officer, Falcon Edge Capital.

"Matrix has had the privilege of co-leading DealShare's Seed & Series A rounds along with Falcon Edge. This fundraise is a testament to DealShare's exponential growth and capital-efficient business model, which uniquely serves the needs of tier-II/III consumers that are embracing online grocery shopping like never before! We are delighted to be re-investing in the DealShare team once again and wish the team all the very best as they seek to transform the social-commerce landscape in India, and we welcome Tiger Global to the partnership," said Tarun Davda, managing director, Matrix India.

"Building scalable technology amounts to solving some hard problems and technical challenges, that are posed by our unique target group of Bharat users. Key problems revolve around savviness, efficient logistics, and making shopping convenient, cost-effective and fun with social engagement, personalization and gamification. This round of investment would help us continue to build a top-notch team and build a highly performant platform by which we will scale to the next level of evolution as a company," added Rajat Shikhar, co-founder, and chief product officer, DealShare.

Avendus was the exclusive financial advisor for this transaction.