dunzo raising $50 Mn Series D round led by Lightbox this month

Task management app dunzo has been in conversation with Google to raise fresh funding for the past few months. The round appears closer with a new venture capital joining it. According to two Entarckr sources, Lightbox VC will also join the search giant in Series D round. 

“Google and Lightbox VC will co-lead the $45 to 50 million round along with existing investors,” said sources aware with the details of the transaction. Sources requested anonymity as they aren’t authorised to speak to the media.

Google is the existing investor in dunzo. It led Rs 80.8 crore worth Series B funding round in December last year along with Blume Ventures and Aspada Investment Advisors. The conversation with both investors is in the final stage. 

“Lightbox would invest around $25-30 million, with a significant contribution from Google and other existing backers. The transaction will be completed within three to four weeks,” emphasised sources.

Ever since its Series B round, the Bengaluru-based startup has been grabbing funds left and right to sustain its substantial cash guzzling operations and expansion. Only last month, dunzo raised about Rs 34.5 crore debt from Alteria Capital.

Importantly, one of the conditions of issuing debt by Alteria last week was that the company would raise an equity round before the end of this month. It essentially hints: dunzo is close to raising Series D round. It also raised $429,000 from US-based an early-stage venture fund Moving Capital.

Raising a fresh financing round is the need of the hour for dunzo because of a deep-pocketed new rival - Swiggy Go. Swiggy had already launched dunzo kind of service in Bengaluru with a plan to expand it to other cities. Entrackr had exclusively reported about Swiggy Go in July.

Besides Swiggy Go, it also competes with food ordering majors - Swiggy, Zomato, Swiggy Stores along with bike-taxi firms - Rapido and Ola Bike. Widening its use case, the company also forayed into B2B logistics segment with ‘Checkout with Dunzo’.

Entrackr queries sent to Google, Lightbox VC and dunzo didn’t elicit any response. We will update the post as when any of them would respond.