Exclusive: Bijnis raises 64 Cr in Series A round led by Sequoia and Matrix

Update: The round was closed at $10 million.

Bijnis, a business-to-business marketplace for unorganised retail segment, has raised Rs 63.9 crore in its Series A round from Sequoia, Matrix Partners and its existing investors WaterBridge Ventures and Info Edge.

While Sequoia and Matrix have invested Rs 28 crore each in the fresh financing round, Info Edge and WaterBridge invested Rs 5.3 crore and Rs 2.16 crore respectively. According to the company’s regulatory filings, it has allotted 14,865 Series A CCPS at Rs 42,988 per share to these investors to raise Rs 63.9 crore.

As per Fintrackr’s calculation, Bijnis (formerly ShoeKonnect) has been valued close to Rs 190 crore after the allotment of fresh equity shares.

Post allotment, Info Edge will be the biggest shareholder in Bijnis with a 28.2% stake while both Sequoia and Matrix will hold 15% stake each. Promoters’ equity has been diluted from 35.69% to 23.47% in this transaction while WaterBridge holds 9.85%  stake.

WaterBridge and Info Edge had invested Rs 11 crore in the Delhi-based startup’s pre Series A round in September 2019. Bootstrapped for nearly two years, Bijnis raked its maiden funding of Rs 95 lakh in 2016 from Indian Angel Network.

Besides fundraising, the company also passed a special resolution to create an employee stock option (ESOP) pool comprising 2,448 equity shares. The newly created ESOP pool constitutes 5.64% stake in the company and currently worth Rs 10.53 crore. 

Bijnis joins a clutch of early stage companies such as Rooter, FleetX, SimSim, Max Wholesale and several others who have constituted an ESOP pool this year.

Founded by Siddharth Vij, Chaitanya Rathi, Siddharth Rastogi and Shubham Agrawal, Bijnis had announced the addition of apparels as a category last year. However, at present, its app is only showcasing shoes. It enables retailers to purchase directly from the source eliminating the hassle of price negotiations, quality assurance and payment security. 

The five year old company saw its operating revenues increase 6.2X from Rs 37 lakhs in FY18 to Rs 2.3 crore in FY19. Bijnis earned 56.5% of its revenues through logistic fess and the rest through commission on sales on the platform.

The company spent dearly to achieve the increase in scale of sales. Total expenses shot up eight fold from Rs 1.15 crore in FY18 to around Rs 9 crore in FY19. Around 52% of the total expenses was spent on fulfillment and transportation of goods, 28% on employee benefits and the remaining on other operational costs.

The ramping up of expenses took the P/L further into the red and losses rose 8.5X from Rs 78.5 lakhs to Rs 6.7 crore in FY19. Bijnis spent Rs 3.93 to earn a rupee as revenue in FY19, 25.5% more than Rs 3.13 it spent for the same during FY18.