Including the current funding, Udaan has received a total investment of US$900 million
In a fresh round of financing, Bengaluru-based Business-to-Business (B2B) ecommerce startup Udaan raised US$30 million from Singapore-based parent company Trustroot Internet on March 23, according to a press report. Udaan passed a special resolution to allot 243,161 Class A equity shares to Trustroot in lieu of their investment. The equity shares were priced at approximately $116.13 per share at current exchange rates.
Last year, Trustroot invested $20 million, $5 million and $10 million in Udaan in May, June and July respectively.
Udaan reached unicorn status within 26 months from its official launch in June 2017; the company was valued at $1 billion in August 2019 after the conclusion of its Series C round of funding. The firm subsequently reached a valuation of $2.8 billion after raising $585 million in a Series D round of financing in October 2019.
In its valuation report in February, Udaan valued itself at $7.5 billion based on cash flows for nine financial years and equity infusions expected over three years. According to the same report, the firm passed a resolution to receive $51 million in an internal infusion from Trustroot; the latest funding is the first tranche of this expected investment.
Furthermore, the company aims to raise $140.7 million through equity infusions by March, 2020. Udaan, owned by Hiveloop Technology, expects equity capital investments of $128 million in FY2020-21 and US$184.5 million in FY2021-22.
“B2B ecommerce is a big market opportunity with 500 million SMEs doing annual trade worth of $600-800 billion,” Udaan Co-founder Sujeet Kumar said in an interview last year.
Udaan was established in 2016 by three former Flipkart senior executives–Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar and Vaibhav Gupta. Udaan is ahead of competitors like ShopKirana and Jumbotail in business reach, and claims to have matched 20,000 wholesalers to three million retailers in more than 900 cities since its inception. The company invested $1.9 million into restaurant management and food delivery platform PetPooja in February 2020 to incorporate the startup’s data on fresh food supplies into Udaan’s business.
While far from profitable, with annual expenditure of over $110 million in 2019 as compared with $6 million in revenues, the company is one of India’s most highly-valued and highly-funded startups, with a roster of high-flying investors that includes Tencent, Altimeter Capital, Digital Sky Technologies (DST Global), GGV Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Hillhouse Capital Group.
