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Social Commerce startup GlowRoad in talks to raise Series C round

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ANI

Bengaluru-based social commerce startup GlowRoad is in talks to raise Series C round from undisclosed investors.

The company had recently raised Series B investment from Accel Partners, CDH China, Korea Investment Partners, and Vertex in April 2019. Prior to which they raised Series A round from Accel Partners.

Founded by Sonal Verma and Kunal Sinha in June 2017, GlowRoad is a social commerce platform which lets users resell products directly from manufacturers and suppliers through social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. GlowRoad manages the entire process from managing suppliers, payment, shipment, returns, etc, letting users just to share and earn.

 

As of July 2019, GlowRoad has over 6 million resellers from 1000+ cities and is growing at a rate of 150per cent quarter-on-quarter. The company clocks 25000 transactions every day and 100 million annualized GMV. The founders stated that they are currently contribution margin (CM) positive and nearing to achieve profitability.

"We are looking forward to rapid growth and expansion in the coming days. We are planning to expand our presence to other geographies like the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. We are also building a multi-lingual platform for India. We are in the process of increasing our on-field marketing and tech team to support our rapid expansions", said Kunal Sinha, Founder and CEO of GlowRoad.

Social commerce model is successful than traditional e-commerce model because it reduces the cost of overheads, operations and marketing while increasing reach and sales through the reseller network.

"In just two years our numbers are tremendous and we are one of the fastest-growing social commerce startup in India. We are in talks to raise Series C round to support and accelerate our growth and expansion plans", he added.

PayPal's report on social commerce states that by 2018 social media users in Asia has surpassed 1 billion and 67 per cent of consumers have experienced buying/selling on social media. India's e-commerce market is projected to be USD 220 billion by 2025, and Social Commerce has the potential to be a $100 billion market.

Recently, Bytedance Ltd, which owns TikTok, has released a statement that they are looking forward to investing in India's social commerce sector. Former Matrix Partners venture capitalist, Nikhil Singh, has joined ByteDance's overseas investment team to manage this investment plan. Meesho, Shop101, Shopmatic, Shopify, Udaan, etc are other startups that are exploring social commerce space in India.

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First Published: Jul 24 2019 | 4:35 PM IST

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