Exclusive: Accel and Shunwei lead Series A round in video commerce app SimSim

Video commerce and bookkeeping startups have turned out to be a favourite of venture capitalists and blue-chip angel investors. While KhataBook and OKCredit have raised over $100 million from top tier VCs, video commerce startups BulBul, EkAnek and SimSim have also managed to attract significant capital from top-notch investors.

BulBul has raised over $15 million total risk capital from Sequoia India, Surge,  Leo Capital and CDH Investments. EkAnek secured about $10 million seed round from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed and Matrix Partners.

SimSim, on the other hand, raised seed capital from HNIs including Sunil Kalra, Gaurav Bedi and Maninder Gulati.

The Delhi-based firm founded by former Paytm, Mckinsey and Foodpanda executives, has just raised Rs 43.39 crore Series A round led by Accel India and Shunwei Capital (via Astrent IV India). Both investors have invested Rs 17.91 crore each while Good Capital participated in the round with Rs 7.16 crore. Following the investment, Accel and Astrent hold 12.5% stake each.

Recently announced micro VC firm Good Capital has 13.69% equity in SimSim. According to RoC filings, Sunil Kalra and Samarth Bedi also invested Rs 20.4 lakh each in the company. Entrackr's back-of-the-envelope calculation shows SimSim has been valued at Rs 143.31 crore in the new financing round.

It’s worth noting that this is the second bet for Shunwei in social commerce space. It had earlier invested in the poster boy of Indian social commerce startup - Meesho - across several rounds.

Video commerce startups have been the talk of the town in the startup community since the beginning of his year. However, only BulBul has given some data points such as GMV and the gross number of transactions. The Sachin Bhatia-led firm processed 400,000 transactions and Rs 15 crore worth of GMV between March and October 2019.

While social commerce (including video and influencer commerce) has managed to draw the interest of venture capital firms, they have turned cautious as even scaled startups in the space are finding it tough to figure out the unit economics.

Some experts believe that large e-commerce firms have an advantage in the social commerce space as they have organic traffic and understanding of the supply chain, et al.

Since social commerce and bookkeeping startups have been attracting heightened interest from venture capitalists, they would be under media scrutiny as far as their scale and performances are concerned. What do you think will be the future course of both these segments in the long haul?