China's CDH Investments leads $10 Mn round in social commerce app GlowRoad

From nascent to the prospering stage, social commerce platforms in India has become a lucrative space for investors in the past year.

While China leads social commerce segment globally, investors from the region are eyeing Indian startups to invest in. For example, Shunwei Capital led $50 million Series B round in a similar startup called Meesho.

Now, another C2C reseller platform GlowRoad that is solely focused on women buyers and sellers has raised $10 million in Series B funding round led by China-based CDH Investments.

Existing investor Accel Partners also participated in the round that concluded last month only. In 2017, GlowRoad raised $2 million Series A round led by Accel.

GlowRoad will use the fresh capital to strengthen its supply chain and for business growth.

Launched in 2017, the startup was earlier known as LocalQueen.com that was acquihired by Sonal Verma who renamed the company as GlowRoad.

The startup essentially provides trading platforms for suppliers and sellers, opening stores for sellers, and enable logistics services. It has partnered with local logistics companies like XpressBees, Ecom Express, Delhivery, EKart Logistics.

Currently, there are 200,000 sellers working with GlowRoad, which are distributed in more than 1,000 cities in India. With over 100,000 SKUs, the startup claims more than half of its sellers are housewives.

Like Meesho and other competitors - Shop101 or Wooplr, GlowRoad enables merchants to sell their products via social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram.

The rising scale of social commerce startups like GlowRoad is a good sign for people living in tier-III, tier-IV cities especially women who want a side income and work from home.

According to a report by global management & strategy consulting firm Zinnov, India’s e-commerce market is expected to be worth $220 billion by 2025 and one of the main beneficiaries will be women.

The development was reported by ET via 36Kr.