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Social shopping portal Limeroad has raised $30 million in Series C funding. The investment was led by Tiger Global. Other existing investors Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the third round of funding.
With this, LimeRoad has raised $45 million this year, and in all $50 million since it started three years back.
With this, LimeRoad has raised $45 million this year, and in all $50 million since it started three years back.
The funds will be used to scale up technology to personalise the platform and reach 100 million women, LimeRoad's co-founder and CEO Suchi Mukherjee told Business Standard. India is likely to have 400 million smartphone users, 100-150 million of which will be women.
Tiger Global, which had in May last year led a $15-million round in LimeRoad, also led a $5 million round in Roposo.com.
"We grew our GMV by 600% in the past year, with 80-85% of our orders coming from repeat customers," Mukherjee said. According to an industry estimate, the startup is clocking Rs 100 crore in revenues, and is likely to sustain its growth this year.
Lee Fixel, Partner at Tiger Global, said the uniqueness of LimeRoad lies in the user base and the mission of providing an engaging platform for smaller brands to thrive. Tiger Global is an early investor in over half a dozen Indian start-ups, including Flipkart, Myntra and Ola Cabs.
Currently, 60% of LimeRoad's transactions come through the mobile, with projections of it touching 80% shortly, the company said in a statement.
LimeRoad was founded by Suchi Mukherjee, Prashant Malik and Ankush Mehra. While Mukherjee worked in leadership roles in eBay, Skype and Gumtree, before she founded LimeRoad in 2012, Malik was an early Facebook employee, and Mehra headed supply chain at Reliance Hypermarkets.
Avnish Bajaj, Managing Director of Matrix India, said: “The LimeRoad team is a unique combination of a crystal clear vision combined with sheer execution prowess. We continue to be amazed by their sheer passion, sharp thinking and their core engagement metrics.”
Bejul Somaia, Managing Director, Lightspeed Advisory Services India, said: “We continue to be highly supportive of LimeRoad. This is a truly exceptional team that has already disproved many accepted notions in Indian online commerce as a result of which they are showing extraordinary organic traction.”
Social commerce facilitates discovery of products, purchases and their promotions, using user-generated content. The content on LimeRoad’s platform is user generated content either by scrap-bookers or by vendors who post products.
Over the last year, LimeRoad has been nurturing a unique community that takes products from thousands of sellers from across the country and shows users how to transform even the most basic white t-shirt into a style statement. The community posted more than 1.5 million style statements as “scrapbooks” last month alone, with per day postings reaching 100,000.
“We are revolutionising the way lifestyle products are discovered and ultimately bought in India, and in doing so, we are changing social order. Smaller unique sellers from across the country are getting discovered, women from across the country are using scrapbooks as a medium of style expression, and millions of users are getting access to highly affordable and unique style,” said Mukherjee.
