E-commerce platform Udaan raises $585 mn from Tencent, Footpath Ventures

International News

Business-to-business (B2B) platform Udaan raised $585 million from Tencent, Altimeter, Footpath Ventures, Hillhouse, GGV Capital, and Citi Ventures, it said.
Existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and DST Global also contributed to the round. This takes the total funds raised by the e-commerce start-up to $870 million since 2016.
According to Vivek Durai, founder of business intelligence platform Paper.vc, Tencent led the Series D financing round, by contributing roughly a quarter of the total raise, giving the firm a “post-money valuation in the range of $2.5 billion”.
With this fundraise, Udaan will continue its long-term investment approach in building its platform.
Founded by former Flipkart executives Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar, and Vaibhav Gupta, Udaan has operations in categories such as lifestyle, electronics, home and kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, fast-moving consumer goods, toys, and general merchandise.
chart Udaan said it enables small manufacturers, farmers, mills, and brands to sell their products across the country at low costs, with 100 per cent payment security and transparency. “Udaan’s unique approach could enhance the capabilities of millions of retail stores,” said Martin Lau, president of Tencent.

 The Indian market has a large number of small businesses across manufacturing and trade, including over 100 million farmers and 15 million small manufacturers, as well as above 30 million traders, retailers and service businesses....READ MORE

ShareChat raises $100 million in Series D funding led by Twitter

Company News
ShareChat, a regional social media platform, on Friday announced that it had raised a new round of funding of $100 million in its Series-D funding, where Twitter and TrustBridge Partners are two new investors.
To date, ShareChat has raised $224 million. Existing investors participating in this round include Shunwei Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, SAIF Capital, India Quotient and Morningside Venture Capital.
This new round of funding will help ShareChat strengthen the technology infrastructure for its platform as the company looks to scale its business. Additionally, ShareChat will acquire talent to help propel the exchange of ideas among its strategic partners. To accelerate the internet ecosystem in India, the company will also be introducing more features to make the experience seamless across devices.
“This is a very exciting time for us at ShareChat as we see our platform growing rapidly. With this new round of funding, we are positioned to take the next leap in our growth story. As we scale up, our focus remains to help the ShareChat community better express themselves in the comfort of their native language,” Ankush Sachdeva, CEO, ShareChat ​said.
Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director of Twitter India said that Twitter and ShareChat are aligned on the broader purpose of serving the public conversation, helping the world learn faster and solve common challenges. This investment will help ShareChat grow and provide the company’s management team access to Twitter’s executives as thought partners, he added.

“Lightspeed is excited to continue to support ShareChat in every financing round – Series A through the current Series D, and beyond...Read More