Grofers, a hyperlocal express delivery startup, has raised $120 million, or Rs 780 crore, in a new funding round which is being led by Japan’s SoftBank Corp. Existing investors in the two-year-old Gurgaon-based company, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital and Apoletto Managers, a personal fund managed by DST Global’s partners, have also participated in this new round, the third one this year for Grofers.
Albinder Dhindsa, founder & CEO, Grofers, confirmed the development to TOI exclusively.
Sources privy to the fund-raise said the company has gone from being valued at $33 million, when it raised its Series A round in February, to more than $300 million in its latest fund-raise.
That’s a 10-fold increase in valuation in less than a year. This $120-million Series C round would be one of the largest at this stage raised by any Indian tech startup, and comes at a time when risk investors are turning cautious while laying new bets. All told, Grofers has now racked up more than $160 million.
Dhindsa, without commenting on the specifics of the deal, said, “We are happy to welcome SoftBank on board as a partner as we try to build a marketplace for consumable products. Grofers currently supports over 10,000 small merchants in selling locally and we hope that with the additional capital, we will be able to invest in building this ecosystem further.” For SoftBank, this would be its fifth investment in India over the past year after Snapdeal, Ola, Housing and budget hotel aggregation platform Oyo Rooms.
The Japanese telecom and internet giant typically picks up 20-30% stake in companies which are in mid-to-late stages.
Grofers, one of the fastest growing and most well-funded early-stage startups, competes with the likes of Big Basket, Peppertap and now also the e-commerce majors which have stepped into the express delivery segment.
While Amazon piloted Kirana Now in some parts of Bangalore earlier this year, Flipkart launched its ‘Nearby’ app again in Bangalore and Snapdeal picked up stake in Peppertap, indicating the potential these e-commerce players see in this space. Founded by Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar in 2013, Grofers started as a business-to-business delivery service but it pivoted and became a consumer-facing play a year ago, after which all the funding started pouring in for the startup.
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