Exclusive: SoftBank valued Grofers at $644 Mn in Series F round

Online grocery firm Grofers which has been raising money in tranches this year has witnessed a 2.7X jump in its valuation since its fundraise 2018. According to a back-of-the-envelope calculation by Entrackr, SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF) Growth has valued Grofers International at around $643.52 million across all four tranches of the Series F round that were pumped in this year. 

This is a far cry from the $1 billion valuation estimate provided by Bloomberg when Grofers announced its series F funding — falling short by over $360 million.  

Grofers had announced Series F round in May led by SVF, but it hadn’t revealed the amount pumped in by the Masayoshi Son-led investment conglomerate. Regulatory filings in Singapore show that Grofers International has raised a total $175 million from SoftBank in its Series F this year.

In the latest and perhaps the last tranche, Grofers International has received $5 million from SVF Growth earlier this month. Before this, SoftBank invested $70 million in August while an infusion of $62.5 million was made in June. 

Besides that, it had poured $37.5 million in the first tranche of Series F in February this year.

Regulatory filings show that Grofers International has issued 95,844 shares at a price of about $52.17 each. Importantly, SVF Growth had picked up Series F shares across four tranches at the same price of around $52.17. Besides SoftBank, South Korean investment firm KTB Ventures and existing investors — Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital also invested in the Series F round.

Grofers last raised $62 million in its series E round in 2018. At the time, the firm was valued at $250 million — around 40% lower than its valuation of $400 million in 2015.  

Grofers has turned its business around through a differentiated model from rival BigBasket. The company had changed its track last year to become a private label company. Moreover, unlike the Bengaluru-based grocery marketplace, Grofers targets the mass-market and monthly stock-up needs of households with grocery and FMCG brands.

According to experts, including a few investors, the revised focus has brought back the confidence of SoftBank and other existing investors in Grofers. The pivot also helped the Gurugram-based company to increase its sale of goods 2.4X to Rs 1,212 crore in FY19 from Rs 503 crore in FY18.

Similar to many heavily-funded e-commerce companies, Grofers has a complex company structure. Its Indian operations are handled via two major entities — Grofers India Pvt Limited which handles the business support services and Hands-On Trades Private Limited.

Entrackr did an in-depth study of the financial of both entities in FY19.

To penetrate the offline retail market with its range of private labels, Grofers has recently started turning the neighbourhood kirana stores into a Grofers-branded store. The move has been helping the company push its product range in offline retail along with gaining large visibility of its in-house brands.