Mobile refurbishing startup Yaantra raises Rs 20 Cr from existing investors

Yaantra, a company into repairing and refurbishing of smartphones, has secured $3.1 million (about Rs 20 crore) in its fourth round of funding from existing investors, private equity fund Carpediem Capital and family office Duane Park.

With this round of funding, the startup has till date raised a sum of $10 million (Rs 65 crore).

According to the CEO at Yaantra, Jayant Jha, the funding which has been raised will be used for expansion. The company aims to spread to 25 tier-II cities by next year.

The startup is expecting that the fresh round will help in boosting the firm's relationship with key partners and help maximise the impact of its offerings, he added.

At present, it provides on-demand multi-brand smartphone repair services across Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad.

In 2016, Yaantra had raised a whopping $6million from existing partners in its Series A funding. Prior to this, it had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors of Indian Angel network.

Founded in 2013 by entrepreneurs Jayant Jha, Ankit Saraf and Anmol Gupta, Yaantra sells refurbished multi-brand smartphones with warranty. Last year, Gadgetwood has rebranded itself as Yaantra, which claims to employ over 700 people and refurbish over a lakh smartphones a month.

After interest shown by iphone maker Apple in the refurbished smartphones market of India, Flipkart, is also planning to begin selling refurbished smartphones from popular brands, such as Samsung On Series, Lenovo, Motorola and Sony Xperia by Diwali.

Of late in this space, a few mobile startups got funding. In August 2016, mobile phone repair platform Repaireasy raised a pre-Series A round from a consortium of international and domestic investors. Last year in April, another startup Servify, which offers brand-authorised after-sales support, raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding from Blume Ventures.

Yaantra: Website