Udaan raises $280 Mn in its extended Series D round

B2B e-commerce platform Udaan has raised $280 million in its extended Series D round from new and existing investors. Octahedron Capital and Moonstone Capital are the two new investors who joined existing backers Lightspeed, DST Global, GGV Capital, Altimeter and Tencent in the round.

According to Udaan, the additional financing will be utilised to expand its B2B e-commerce market and enhance business capabilities to serve small and medium businesses, and achieve profitability.

The fresh financing exercise takes the overall fund raised by Udaan to date to $1.15 billion.

Commenting on the development, Amod Malviya, co-founder of Udaan said “Covid-19 has accelerated the already fast digital-led evolution of the highly fragmented and unorganized Indian trade/retail industry. While at the same time, the pandemic also highlighted the unique structure of Indian economy, with millions of kiranas and neighbourhood stores becoming the lifeline of our country at the time of crisis....” 

The Covid-19 induced lockdown proved to be a tough phase for Udaan as the company had laid off around 1000 contract staff to conserve capital.

While Udaan hasn’t commented on the post-money valuation, sources aware of the development pegged it at a little over $3 billion. Interestingly, the Bengaluru-based firm had also filed a valuation report in September 2019 in which the company valued itself at $7.5 billion. 

The company’s valuation report was based on projected cash flows and equity infusions. 

Launched in 2016, Udaan became one of the fastest startups to achieve unicorn status in September 2018. The company has operations across categories including lifestyle, electronics, home & kitchen, staples, fruits and vegetables, FMCG, pharma, toys and general merchandise.  It claims to have a network of over 3 million users in 900 cities by connecting them to over 25,000 sellers across the country.