Dunzo closes $45 Mn Series D round led by Lightbox

Task management, bike taxi cum hyper-local delivery app Dunzo, has finally closed $45 million Series D round, which was in talks for the past five months.

A month ago, Entrackr had reported about Dunzo's probable $45-50 million funding to be led by Lightbox VC and Google.

According to a latest TOI report, three new investors - Lightbox, South Korea’s STIC Ventures, and US-based 3L Capital - have joined the round whereas Google also participated. The Bengaluru-based company may also see a top-up of $10 million in the round, making it a final close at $55 million.

Dunzo has been reportedly valued at around $180-200 million in the fresh financing round.

The Kabir Biswas-led company will deploy the fresh proceeds for enhancing tech and scaling up commerce business. The company's core competency is delivery of parcels from point A to B besides grocery, staples, food and medicine through tie-ups with small and large merchants.

In hyper-local (including grocery, medicine and food) and parcel delivery segment, foodtech Unicorn Swiggy has been eating up a significant market share of Dunzo through its newly launched products - Swiggy Go and Swiggy Stores.

On the other hand, e-commerce giant Amazon had also launched express grocery delivery service - AmazonFresh.

Besides Swiggy, it also competes with food ordering major Zomato along with bike-taxi firms – Rapido and Ola Bike. In May, the company also forayed into B2B logistics segment via ‘Checkout with Dunzo’.

It was a much-needed risk round for the company, which has been picking up small tranches, especially in debt from Alteria Capital.

To fight against the rivals mentioned above, Dunzo has been reducing losses occurs on per delivery. According to the company, it has brought down per delivery losses from Rs 142 to Rs 30.

The firm also claimed to have increased monthly orders from 40,000-50,000 in January to a whopping 20 lakh orders a month. Further, Dunzo is figuring out to make most or a large part of transactions profitable.