Led · Series B · Jan 2019

Instamojo, founded in 2012, offers independent merchants a mobile-optimized storefront, unique payment links, inventory management and a micro-loan product called Mojo Capital. The platform enables sellers to reach customers via YouTube, Facebook, WhatsApp and other channels and is designed for merchants earning under $30,000 annually. Instamojo serves about 650,000 merchants and is adding roughly 1,200 new merchants per day; about half sell physical products and the remainder sell services or digital goods. Revenue comes from a 2% cut on sales, fees on successful deliveries and commissions on micro-loans. Mojo Capital has partnered with 12 financial organizations and in four months disbursed about $4 million across roughly 50,000 dispersions, with the company projecting the lending business will scale to a $30 million run rate by year-end. Future plans include building a merchant community, expanding the engineering team and increasing headcount from 120 to about 250 by 2020 while scaling to over one million retailers in India. Instamojo runs an on-demand payments and e-commerce platform targeting small businesses. The company says it has helped over 300,000 SMEs, acquired 10% of digitally-active SMEs in India and controls 30% of their annual turnover. It turned EBITDA positive in July 2017 and has seen 10–15% month-on-month growth. Instamojo plans to expand its suite of offerings and introduce e-commerce-enabling services such as cataloguing, logistics, shipping and GST compliance assistance. It will also leverage big data, introduce financial services including lending via third-party providers, and expand its leadership team to meet these goals. The company was founded in 2012 and is based in Bengaluru. Instamojo is an online payment collection platform that started focused on digital goods and services and later added storefronts for physical products. It provides seller tools including an app store (free and paid apps), a payments button for websites, and features such as Social Pay and Instamping. The company reported about 10,000 unique Social Pay transactions to date. Instamojo plans to use the new funding for product development, marketing, expanding its team across functions, and to open a new office in Bangalore; it will also launch a referral program for buyers and sellers. Prior to this round, the company had raised roughly $500,000 from 500 Startups, Blume Ventures and several angel investors. Kalaari Capital’s MD Vani Kola will join Instamojo’s board as part of the deal. Instamojo operates a platform that lets users sell digital creations—ebooks, online tutorials, research reports, photographs, software, handcrafted digital illustrations and templates—via a quick checkout system. The company manages hosting, security, payment processing and automated delivery of digital goods. Instamojo charges a 10% fee on each paid transaction. Founded in late 2010 by Aditya Sengupta, Akash Gehani, Harshad Sharma and Sampad Swain, the company is incubated at Dave McClure’s 500 Startups. It has previously raised funding from Rajan Anandan, Sunil Kalra and 500 Startups and has now taken additional undisclosed funding. The article does not provide revenue or user metrics.

Participated · Debt Financing · Nov 2018

Drivezy operates a peer-to-peer car, bike and scooter rental platform where vehicle owners list idle vehicles for hourly, daily or monthly rentals. The platform’s pricing ranges roughly from 100–2,500 rupees per day depending on vehicle type. The company has been scaling its fleet and partnerships—vehicle listings have doubled since January and it added 3,000 scooters in Bengaluru and Hyderabad via a partnership with Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India. Drivezy plans aggressive expansion of its bike and scooter rental initiatives, targeting addition of 10,000 bikes next month and deployment of 50,000 vehicles over the next three years. Financially, the company has raised about $31 million to date and is using new funds to improve technology infrastructure and ramp up marketing to support growth. Drivezy aims to capture roughly 2% of vehicles sold into a shared model over three years and expand into new Indian cities including Delhi-NCR, Punjab and Rajasthan. Drivezy is an aggregator service for car and bike rentals that enables users to hire vehicles for self-drive by the hour, day, or week with home delivery. Led by CEO and co-founder Ashwarya Singh, the company operates in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Mysuru. Drivezy raised $10m in funding and announced the launch of an initial coin offering (ICO). The company intends to use the funds to expand into new markets across India and abroad. As part of its ICO plans, Drivezy aims to create rental coins, a private currency for its platform.