Appears like Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya and Vaibhav Gupta’s choice to jump ship from Flipkart to focus on their own venture is paying off.The trio
revealed this morning that their B2B e-commerce start-up Udaan had raised $225 million in Series C financing co-led by DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with capital coming out of the latter’s growth fund. The money infusion, inning accordance with Indian media reports, makes Udaan the fastest-ever Indian start-up to be valued at over $1 billion.Flipkart, among the most successful e-commerce platforms from India, sold to Walmart in a$16 billion offer earlier this year. Kumar, Malviya and Gupta, which were the previous president of operations, CTO and SVP of organisation financing and analytics at Flipkart, respectively, left the business in 2016. Quickly after establishing the B2B marketplace, the three raised$10 million in a Series A led by Lightspeed in late 2016– then another $50 million earlier this year, also led by Lightspeed, with involvement from the endeavor capital company’s India office.Bejul Somaia, a managing director at Lightspeed India that’s been on the Bengaluru-based business’s board because that A round, verified the current financing to TechCrunch.
“We have been lucky to see the company scale really quickly from close quarters,”Somaia told me via e-mail.”We’re drawn to the business’s first-principles approach to solving substantial problemsthat are unique in the Indian context.”Udaan’s mobile app links 150,000 traders, wholesalers and retailers in India, making it possible for small-and medium-sized services to do business directly with manufacturers. Now, electronics and consumer items are
for sale on the app, with plans for the company to make commercial products, fresh vegetables and fruits, workplace materials and more available soon.At simply 26 months of age, there are few companies that have actually raced– or shall we state trotted– into the unicorn club at such a speed. Current examples include the 3D printing company Desktop Metal, which crossed the limit 21 months after its founding. Plus, there’s the Craigslist rival Letgo; it ended up being a unicorn in simply two years.Indian startup unicorns, which there are less, have traditionally taken longer to make their unicorn horns.On-demand shipment platform Swiggy, for example, ended up being a unicorn previously this year, about 4 years after it was founded. Zomato, another shipment app,< a href=https://www.livemint.com/Companies/Oa9EEL8OpufrTIyVV21JxO/Zomato-valued-at-14-billion-by-Nomura.html > amassed a$1.4 billion appraisal in 2017 after nearly 10
years in organisation.
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