There have been many actions going on in alternate e-commerce space (social plus video-focused commerce). After the early success of Meesho, a slew of social commerce startups has been attracting the attention of blue-chip angels and institutional investors.
BulBul Shop, EkAnek, and SimSim already had raised decent investment in early-stage rounds. WMall is also joining the league of the firms mentioned above with a Series B round. According to three Entrackr sources, the company is raising up to $5-7 million fresh round.
“Chiratae is leading the round while existing investor SAIF Partners and Venture Highway will invest on a pro-rata basis,” added sources on condition of anonymity. Earlier, the Bengaluru-based firm had raised around $2 million in Series A equity financing round in February this year.
WMall sells products through a combination of video and text. It essentially leverages WhatsApp, YouTube to push third party products in two vernacular languages – Gujarati and Hindi. The firm primarily focuses on lifestyle, home decor, apparels and kitchen essentials.
WMall recently introduced a feature called “ Shopping Saheli” where influencers can upload videos of the products along with their use cases. Besides the web-based platform, it also has an Android application that has more than 50,000 downloads with a rating of 4.1 on the Play store.
“Due diligence was completed by Chiratae last month, and contours of the transaction has been finalised. It’s likely to be announced soon,” added sources.
Entrackr queries sent to Chiratae and WMall co-founder and CEO Harmin Shah didn’t elicit any response. We will update the post as and when they respond.
Unlike regular e-commerce, social commerce startups have been focusing on non-English speaker residing in tier II, III and IV cities as well as developed rural pockets. Their primary premise is to bring e-commerce to 200 million upcoming shoppers.
Investors are also showing bullishness on the segment, and it can be gauged from three digits round raised by Meesho. GlowRoad and Shop101 also raised $22.5 and $15 million, respectively. EkAnek, and BulBulShop already had raised sizeable early-stage rounds.
EkAnek had closed $10 million seed round from Lightspeed and Matrix while Sequoia capital and Leo Capital had invested $5 million in Sachin Bhatia-led BulBul. SimSim had raised about $1.5 million from several well-known angles including executives of Flipkart, Mckinsey and OYO.
