Deal Street: Ecom Express, Licious, Purplle Raise Rs 700 Crore In Fresh Funding
Three startups—Licious, Ecom Express and Purplle—raised nearly Rs 700 crore in funding last week. Here’s a look at the deals.
Three startups raised nearly Rs 700 crore in venture capital funding last week across sectors such as logistics, on-demand delivery and beauty. A Bengaluru-based startup led the funding pack. Here’s what went on.
Licious Raises $30 Million To Fund Expansion
Licious, a meat delivery startup, raised $30 million in a funding round led by Singapore-based Vertex Growth Fund.
Existing investors such as 3one4 Capital, Bertelsmann India Investments, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, and Sistema Asia Fund also participated in the fundraise, Vivek Gupta, co-founder of Licious, told BloombergQuint in an interview.
The Bengaluru-based company, run by Delightful Gourmet Pvt. Ltd., processes more than 17,000 orders a day. The company, Gupta said, plans to use the proceeds to double down on expansion, launch new products and open more physical stores.
Licious, mostly competing with local meat shops, has been witnessing the rise of other on-demand meat delivery startups in the country. Three months ago, its rival FreshToHome bagged $20 million in funding. Also, BigBasket has started offering meat products on its platform.
Gupta, however, said grocery is not similar to selling meat online. “The gap is not how meat is delivered but about selling high quality meat on the platform,” he said, adding the company is in talks with Flipkart to partner and sell meat online.
CDC Group Invests $36 Million In Logistics Startup Ecom Express
Logistics firm Ecom Express raised $36 million from CDC Group Plc, the U.K. government’s development finance institution.
The company plans to use the funds to expand its network and increase employee strength from 32,000 to 47,000 over the next one to two years, it said in a statement.
CDC said it would work with Ecom Express to transition a proportion of its distribution fleet to electric vehicles.
Founded in 2012, the company provides end-to-end logistics solutions, specifically to the e-commerce market. It picks up and delivers online orders and provides business-to-business goods transport, cross-border logistics and reverse logistics services.
The company is present in all states and operates in more than 2,400 towns and cities.
Goldman Sachs Leads Funding Series In Beauty Products Seller
Purplle, a beauty products and services marketplace, raised $30 million (Rs 212 crore) in a Series C round of funding led by Goldman Sachs.
Existing investors IvyCap Ventures, Blume Ventures and JSW Ventures also participated in the fudraise, the company said in a statement.
The firm plans to use the capital to expand and strengthen its supply chain, marketing and technology. “Given our rate of progress, we expect our growth in scale and size to expand 10-fold by the end of 2023,” Rahul Dash, co-founder of Purplle, said in the statement.
Founded in 2012, Purplle operates a beauty and personal care e-commerce platform, with an aim to tap into India’s $7-billion online beauty and personal care market, the company said. It has about 47,500 stock keeping units across more than 1,000 third-party and own brands.