ShopClues is an Indian online marketplace. The article describes the company as a home-grown unicorn. It has raised Rs50 crore in venture debt from InnoVen Capital. The Rs50 crore is reported as roughly $7.7 million. The financing was structured as venture debt rather than equity. The article notes this is a rare instance of a home-grown unicorn opting for venture debt. ShopClues operates an online marketplace focused on low price-point and unstructured categories such as lifestyle, home, kitchen, electronics and automotive accessories. The company emphasizes a merchant-first mindset and products to help SME merchants digitize and scale their businesses. Its GMV has grown more than fourfold since January 2015, it ships over 3.5 million items monthly and attracts more than 100 million visits per month. Leadership says the business has improved capital efficiency and is on a clear path to profitability, with an expectation of profitability by H1 2017 and an eventual IPO in 2017. Planned uses of new capital include building and rolling out new products for merchants and further establishing the company as an e-commerce operating system on the cloud. ShopClues positions itself to expand reach into Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities while leveraging its selection, value proposition and buyer/merchant network. ShopClues, founded in 2011, is an Indian e-commerce marketplace that matches third-party sellers with consumers and emphasizes unstructured categories rather than big-ticket items. The company hosts about 100,000 sellers offering over 10 million products and says it sees 40 million monthly visitors and 1.5 million monthly transactions. Two-thirds of its revenue comes from unstructured categories, and 70% of its business serves consumers in second- and third-tier Indian cities. ShopClues ships to over 25,000 cities. The company intends to grow its seller and product figures 100-fold over the next few years to help SMBs compete with organized retailers online and offline, reflecting its SMB-focused product strategy. ShopClues.com is a managed e-commerce marketplace that connects buyers and sellers online and emphasizes a safe shopping experience. Founded in July 2011 by Sandeep Aggarwal in Silicon Valley, it operates as an Indian subsidiary of Clues Network Inc. The platform lists nearly 750,000 SKUs, over 2,000 global and domestic brands, thousands of online stores across more than 540 categories, and serves nearly 9,000 cities, towns and villages in India. It receives more than 5 million visits per month. The company has 225+ employees in India with offices in Gurgaon, New Delhi, Mumbai and Vadodara. Financially, it completed a close to $10M third round of funding in 2013.

Total raised

$118M

Funding rounds

4

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

May 2017