Exclusive: Sequoia leads Series A round in Animall; valuation jumps 7X in 6 months

Startups in India are now replicating the e-commerce model to all kinds of offerings and investors are hooked. Animall, a startup that connects cattle buyers and sellers, has just closed its Series A round worth Rs 44.45 crore. Sequoia Capital has led the round with Rs 22.2 crore while Omnivore Partners and Lets Venture Fund have put in Rs 7.4 crore and Rs 2.03 crore, respectively. 

The Bengaluru based startup has allotted 53,832 Series A Preference shares at an issue price of Rs 8,264.9 per share to raise the sum, regulatory filings show.

Importantly, this is the third round of funding in the animal husbandry platform in the last seven months. Animall had raised Rs 15 lakhs in its pre-seed round from Pratilipi's vice president Gauri Kanekar and angel investor Rakesh Yadav to jump-start its operations. After a couple of months, Animall raised Rs 5.65 crore seed round led by Beenext Asia with an investment of Rs 3.75 crore in the month of June. 

WEH ventures and Shaadi.com founder Anupam Mittal had also joined the seed round with investments of Rs 1 crore and Rs 75 lakh, respectively. 

As per Fintrackr estimates, Animall has been valued nearly Rs 175 crore (post money) in the latest transaction. It’s noteworthy that the company’s valuation has scaled 7X in a span of 6 months. It was valued around Rs 25 crore when it had raised its seed funding round back in May.

Animall is an online platform that connects cattle buyers and sellers in their area. Currently, it’s present across major parts of the country and claims to be the largest trading platform for pashus (cattle). It also enables dairy farmers to connect and engage with experts and doctors through its community.

The platform operates mainly through its website and Android-based application called “Pashu Mela.” With Hindi as the main language of operation, it has over a million downloads on the Google Play Store.  

Post allotment of Series A round, promoters Neetu Yadav and Libin Babu’s collective stake will be diluted to 48.47% followed by Beenext Asia which will control 18.31% stake in the company. With the investments in the current round, Sequoia Capital has picked up 13.02% stake while Omnivore Partners controls 4.34% stake in Animall. 

Animall appears to be one of the few startups in this new segment of cattle classifieds which is attempting to organize this space. Undoubtedly, the opportunity is large and investment from bluechip backers like Sequoia is a strong validation.