After edtech, social commerce has been drawing significant interest from growth-stage investors such as SoftBank, Tiger Global and Falcon Edge.
After Meesho and DealShare, CityMall is now raising a round from new and existing investors, according to three people aware of the details of the transaction.
“CityMall is in late-stage talks with General Catalyst which is likely to lead a $25-30 million new round,” said one of the sources requesting anonymity. “The company’s existing investors including Accel Partners, Elevation Capital and Jungle Ventures will also participate.”
This will be the second funding round for CityMall in the past two months. Accel had led an $11 million Series A round in the Gurugram-based startup in late March. Entrackr had exclusively reported the development on Feb 15.
“The terms of the deal are almost finalised and the company is likely to be valued at over $150 million in the Series B round,” said another source. According to sources, CityMall was valued at around $40-50 million during its Series A round two months ago.
Queries sent to CityMall, General Catalyst, Accel and Elevation did not elicit an immediate response. We’ll update the post in case they do.
CityMall sells over 3,000 products in the lifestyle, grocery and other categories through a network of community resellers in tier II and III cities. Founded by Angad Kikla and Naisheel Verdhan, the two-year-old company claims to have around 20,000 resellers on its platform that serves over 2 lakh consumers in eight smaller cities across the state of Haryana.
Over the past six months, social commerce companies have been getting significant investment from growth stage backers who are looking for long term bets in the e-commerce space.
Jaipur-based DealShare had raised a $21 million Series C round in December 2020 and has already picked up $28 million in its ongoing Series D round in which Tiger Global appears set to join. Facebook-backed Meesho too had recently scooped up a $300 million round led by SoftBank.
With the fresh round, CityMall will emerge as the third most valued social commerce startup after Meesho and DealShare.
Unlike Meesho, DealShare and CityMall focus on grocery and FMCG products. Crofarm’s Otipy is another player in the space which deals in fresh farm produce and recently it had added more products like spices, snacks and dry fruits, dairy & bakery on its platform.
