DealShare raises $144 million in Series D round of funding

Commenting on the fundraising, Vineet Rao, CEO and Founder, DealShare, said, “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 behaviour and solve hard business problems. This has enabled DealShare to rapidly grow to $200 million 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 e-commerce 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”, added Mr Rao.

“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 e-commerce growth”, said Griffin Schroeder, Partner at Tiger Global.

Sharing his views on the fundraising and the growth trajectory of the company, Sourjyendu Medda, Founder, Chief Business Officer and Chief Finance Officer, DealShare, said, “The funds will be used to augment our current growth trajectory. In FY 20-21 fiscal, we grew 5X to reach $200 Million Annual GMV Runrate. In a short span of 2 years, we have serviced more than 3 million consumers and over 20 million orders. We are confident of hitting a $ 1 billion GMV Runrate by 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”, added Medda.

Since its inception in 2018, DealShare’s focus has been to procure products from local manufacturers and provide them with a platform to digitize their business and compete with lead brands. At present, DealShare has partnered with over 1000 local and regional brands.

“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”, added 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 (5.0x+), while delivering a compelling value proposition to its customers, value-conscious middle Indians in Tier 2 and 3 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”, added Navroz Udwadia, Co-Founder and CEO, Falcon Edge Capital.

With a presence present in over 40 cities and towns across Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi NCR DealShare plans to expand to 100 plus cities in 2021.