If sky is indeed the limit then no one knows this better than B2B e-commerce platform Udaan. After becoming the youngest Indian unicorn company last year, Udaan has soared even higher with fresh funding round of $585 Mn.
Tencent, Altimeter, Footpath Ventures, Hillhouse, GGV Capital, and Citi Ventures spearheaded the massive fundraising round. Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and DST Global also pumped capital in the round.
The latest fundraising round, which is a series D round, has propelled the Bengaluru based company’s market valuation to whopping $2.5 Bn. Apart from Udaan, probably no other B2B player in the entire e-commerce space boosts such high market valuation; setting apart this barely 3 year old company in the league of its own.
Commenting on the latest round, co-founder Vaibhav Gupta, said that the company will utilize the latest funds for expanding their marketplace, ramping up their existing categories and pumping more capital in increasing the efficiencies of fulfillment, delivery and lending & payment.
But what is really Udaan all about?
This high soaring company came into existence in 2016. Three high flying and young entrepreneurs, Vaibhav Gupta, Amod Malviya and Sujeet Kumar, founded the company; with the singular aim to disturb India’s B2B e commerce space.
Simply put, Udaan dreamt of playing the same disruptive role that the likes of Flipkart and Snapdeal had played in the B2C e-commerce space. Today it certainly feels like this young company has achieved this coveted tag.
The simple purpose of this company is to bridge the gap between manufacturers and retailers, helping the latter to source products from original producers by eradicating the middleman from the supply chain. The company claims that streamlining the supply chain helps both manufacturers as well as retailers to maximize their profit.
As of today, the company has more than 20,000 sellers and nearly 10 lakh products on board. Its online market place also boasts more than 15 lakh products and 500 brands across various categories like apparels, electronics, pharmacy, staples, FMGC and more. Apart from market place, the company also provides facilities like logistics, payment, credit and among other facilities.
With India being home to more than 50 Mn SMEs and a massive market of small business, Udaan is steering at a huge business opportunity. But as is the case with all startups, this young company will too face many challenges especially the challenge of expanding its market without adding too much stress on its balance sheet.