Shop101 bags Rs 80 Cr Series B round led by Kalaari and Unilever

Social commerce platform Shop101 has raised Rs 80 crore in its Series B round led by Kalaari Capital and Unilever Ventures. The funding talks started to crop up in last month and Kalaari had recently wired the first tranche of this bigger round.

The Bengaluru-based startup also saw the participation of existing investors such as Stellaris Venture Partners, Vy Capital, and Livspace cofounder Ramakant Sharma in the round.

The fresh round comes after Stellaris led $5 million Series A round in Shop101 with the participation of Vy Capital in July this year.

Shop101 will use the latest proceeds to boost its core leadership team, scale up the supplier network and ramp up its technology platform.

One of the few startups in this segment, Shop101 enables merchants to sell their products via social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

Founded by Abhinav Jain and Aditya Gupta in 2015, Shop101 leverages combined power of social media, resellers, and manufacturers. With 200-230k orders, a month, the startup's growth is driven by tier III and IV cities.

For instance, more than 70 per cent of Shop101’s business comes from smaller towns and cities and business has grown over 50 per cent every month over last year.

Shop101 provides full stack facility for merchants such as enabling a website to SMS updates, e-mail updates, payment gateway, shipping partners. The company charges for services such as logistics and payments.

It competes with Y Combinator-backed Meesho and Helion Venture funded Wooplr. Globally, China's Pinduoduo and Koudai have been leading the social commerce business.

The development was reported by ET.