Participated · Equity · Apr 2024

RedDoorz operates a network of budget hotels. Recent regulatory filings show the company issued shares worth $28.2 million to convertible note holders. The issuance converted outstanding convertible notes into equity shares. Named recipients included Asia Partners, Jungle Ventures, Mirae Asset‑Naver Asia Growth Fund, SIG Venture Capital and others. The filings did not disclose operating metrics or further strategic details. RedDoorz operates a marketplace selling access to budget hotels (two-star, three-star and below) across Southeast Asia. The four-year-old, Singapore-based startup currently has 1,400 hotels on its network and plans to grow to 2,000 by year-end. It operates in 80 cities across Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam and says it will focus expansion within those four markets for at least the next year. RedDoorz recently raised follow-on funding and plans to use capital to expand its hotel network and broaden its technology infrastructure, including building a second engineering hub in Vietnam (its regional tech hub is based in India). CEO Amit Saberwal, a former MakeMyTrip executive, frames the growth as necessary to compete with larger rivals like Oyo and to scale the business toward eventual public listing. RedDoorz operates a branded network of budget hotels across Southeast Asia, standardizing guesthouse-style rooms under the RedDoorz brand to guarantee basics like clean sheets, towels, internet and breakfast. The platform lets small hotel owners access bookings via RedDoorz’s website and Android app while the company also manages leased properties where it runs day-to-day operations. Technology is developed out of India and includes an AI-based dynamic pricing system to help owners set rates by demand, inventory and time of day. The three-year-old company claims about 500 properties in Indonesia and a total of 3,000 rooms across 16 cities, with roughly 80% of bookings made within 72 hours and 65–70% from returning customers. RedDoorz began in Indonesia and has expanded into the Philippines and Singapore (including a leased property in Marine Parade) and plans to go deeper in existing markets and enter Thailand. The company has signaled interest in M&A opportunities and is bringing on senior hires to be "Series B ready." RedDoorz operates an online booking platform focused on budget hotels. The company is based in Singapore. The article reports a recent financing event in which RedDoorz raised $1 million in venture debt. The debt was provided by InnoVen Capital. InnoVen Capital is described as a venture lending firm backed by Temasek Holdings and United Overseas Bank. The article does not disclose additional operational metrics, revenue figures, or future plans. RedDoorz partners with hotels and guest houses to resell rooms while promising a consistent 'RedDoorz approved' stay. The offering emphasizes standard amenities such as free WiFi, satellite TV and quality linen, plus a concierge service and 24-hour customer assistance. The service is mobile-first, with about 70% of bookings coming from mobile devices. The company launched in Indonesia in July 2015 and had expanded to around 200 properties across the country. TechCrunch reports RedDoorz raised SG$2 million (around $1.4 million) in fresh funding described as pre-Series A. CEO and founder Amit Saberwal (formerly chief product officer at MakeMyTrip) said the company will use the funding to expand into Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines and is exploring Singapore; the article contrasts RedDoorz's standardization focus with competitors and alternatives like OYO Rooms, Zenrooms, Nida Rooms and Airbnb.

Participated · Series F · Jul 2021

Mohalla Tech is the parent entity of the vernacular social media platform ShareChat and the short-video entertainment app Moj. The company raised an additional $16 million in debt financing from Singapore-based EDBI. That injection brings the total amount raised in its ongoing financing round to $65 million. The financing reported in the article is structured as debt. The report also states the company laid off approximately 5% of its staff. ShareChat is an Indian social media startup focused on live-streaming and has grown in part through acquiring rival MxTakaTak. The company recently secured $49 million in debt financing from existing investors to fund bonus ESOP grants and boost employee morale. Its valuation plunged from nearly $5 billion to below $2 billion after a new funding round. Management has implemented aggressive cost-cutting measures even as the company reports revenue growth. ShareChat faces challenges monetizing a user base with limited purchasing power and carries a high expense-to-revenue ratio. The firm's ability to adapt—particularly around live-streaming—will be pivotal to its competitive prospects in the Indian market. ShareChat, under parent Mohalla Tech, operates social and short-video platforms and includes apps Moj and the recently acquired MX TakaTak. The company reported 180 million monthly active users for ShareChat and a combined user base of 300 million across Moj and MX TakaTak. It has previously raised capital, including a $266 million funding round that valued it at $3.7 billion and included investors such as Alkeon Capital and Temasek. In the current deal Mohalla Tech secured nearly $300 million in fresh funding from Alphabet's Google, the Times Group and Temasek, valuing the firm at nearly $5 billion. The investment is set to be announced soon and marks Google's second major bet in India's short-video space after backing Josh. ShareChat also counts Twitter and Snap among its investors. ShareChat is a Bangalore-based social network that offers its app in 15 Indian languages and runs Moj, a short-video app launched shortly after India banned TikTok. The company claims more than 160 million users and a 50 million+ creator community; Moj reportedly logs 4.5 billion views per day and average user sessions of about 34 minutes. Moj is described by management as the firm's fastest-growing product and is expected to potentially become bigger than ShareChat. ShareChat has raised over $911 million to date and recently closed an additional $145 million tranche as part of its Series F, bringing its valuation to nearly $3 billion (TechCrunch headline lists $2.88 billion). The business competes in short-form video with players such as MX TakaTak, Glance’s Roposo and DailyHunt’s Josh. Management says it will continue to invest in AI capabilities, scale its global AI organization, build advanced editing tools and help creators monetize on the platform. ShareChat is a Bangalore-based social network that offers apps in 15 Indian languages and targets users in smaller cities and towns across India. The company claims more than 160 million users and has expanded its product suite to include Moj, a short-form video app with over 80 million monthly active users. Moj was built rapidly after TikTok’s exit and integrates Snap’s Camera Kit to strengthen its short‑video offering. ShareChat is experimenting with monetization through commerce interactions in audio chat rooms and launched a fantasy sports app called Jeet. The company says it aims to grow its ecosystem of products toward 1 billion+ cumulative MAUs as internet penetration deepens in India. To date ShareChat has raised about $765 million in funding.

Participated · Series B · Mar 2020

iPrice Group is a Southeast Asian price-comparison platform that aggregates offers from more than 7 billion products and 8 million sellers. It operates in seven countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong, and positions itself as an online shopping companion. Core features include comparing products, prices, seller reputations, delivery conditions, aggregating seller vouchers, and app-based alerts such as its newly launched Price Watch service. Price Watch launched in Indonesia and is scheduled to roll out to Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand in 2022. With new funding, iPrice plans to expand into the consumer lending market to help users find loans to fund purchases, citing a Google prediction that digital lending in Southeast Asia could reach $92 billion by 2025. The company already lists lending partners including Payku (Itochu's subsidiary in Indonesia), Home Credit, Julo, Cashalo, Smartpay, and ZIP, and says the additional capital will support deeper lending partnerships and product rollouts. iPrice Group is a Malaysia-based online shopping companion and e-commerce aggregator focused on Southeast Asia. The platform aggregates six billion offers from more than two million sellers, enabling users to compare products, prices, seller reputation, and delivery conditions in one place. iPrice's stated mission is to bring greater transparency, convenience, and trust to consumers in SEA to help them save money. The company has partnerships with Home Credit (Indonesia), Thairath (Thailand), GoRewards (Philippines), Boost (Malaysia), ViSenze (Singapore), and SmartPay (Vietnam). CEO Paul Brown-Kenyon said iPrice built a product to embed e-commerce into apps and platforms and aims to be a prime partner for leading platforms and super apps in the region. With the newly raised funds, iPrice plans to further refine its product and accelerate the rollout of partnerships while working towards a Series C funding round. iPrice Group operates a price-aggregation and comparison-shopping platform across Southeast Asia, pulling together listings and prices from numerous e-commerce sites. The platform claims to aggregate more than 1.5 billion products from over 1,500 e-commerce partners and says it is the leading product aggregator in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. iPrice reports more than 20 million monthly visitors and about 5 million transactions made through its platforms in 2019. Its core iPrice unit accounted for roughly half of the company’s revenue and operated at a 30% EBITDA margin, a profitability level the company expects other businesses to reach in two to three years. iPrice partners with super apps such as Line and Home Credit to expand reach, and it began by collecting coupons before expanding into broader price aggregation. The company plans to use new funding to develop product-discovery features, including recommendations and professional product reviews. iPrice is an aggregation service that pulls e-commerce websites across Southeast Asia into a single destination, having pivoted from a coupon site to an aggregator. The company offers more than 500 million SKUs across Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. It reports over 50 million visitors since December 2016 and is targeting 150 million visitors in the current year. iPrice generates B2B revenue by working with media groups and brands — clients include Mediacorp in Singapore and Samsung in Indonesia — alongside driving consumer traffic to e-commerce partners. Electronics have been a particular driver of its traffic and listings. The company is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and was founded in 2015. iPrice operates a meta-search e-commerce aggregation service that aggregates product discovery and price comparison across online retailers in Southeast Asia. The platform has built a cleaned, sorted database of retailer and buyer data that the company says is unique to the region. iPrice is Malaysia-based, active in seven countries and employs more than 100 staff, working with retail partners to drive visibility, traffic and sales. The company added price comparison functionality in September and plans to use its dataset to introduce additional features and affiliate revenue products for media companies and independent bloggers. CEO David Chmelar said the company began with product discovery, expanded after seeing traction, and now sees multiple potential uses for its dataset. On the financial side, iPrice closed a $4M Series A and the CEO said the funding gives potential to reach break even and profitability, though no timeframe was provided.

Participated · Series D · Dec 2019

Shadowfax operates a unified last-mile logistics platform serving hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses, including quick-commerce firms and D2C brands. The company’s network reaches over 2,500 cities and more than 15,000 zip codes, making over 2 million package deliveries each day and serving 3.5 million registered users. It runs a logistics and delivery workforce of over 125,000 monthly active delivery personnel and reports it has not lost a customer in five years. Shadowfax says it has remained profitable while growing at a 35% annual rate, driven by wider adoption of quick-commerce in India. The startup works with clients such as Flipkart, Meesho and numerous direct-to-consumer brands and is focused on scaling instant and same-day delivery capabilities. Founded in 2015 by Abhishek Bansal and Vaibhav Khandelwal, Shadowfax operates a tech-enabled logistics network offering hyper-local, same-day, and next-day deliveries across more than 150 cities and towns. The company serves clients including Amazon, Swiggy, BigBasket, Nykaa, and Paytm. Fidelity International is its largest investor, holding roughly a 37% stake, and local reports have valued the company at about USD 200–250 million. Shadowfax says it will invest in onboarding more kirana (mom-and-pop) stores onto its platform and build automated warehouses across the top 10 cities to enable backward integration and end-to-end service. Management has publicly stated plans to grow 10x over the next four years and to pursue an eventual public listing. The business positions itself as a provider of on-demand logistics and hyperlocal fulfilment technology for e-commerce and grocery players. Shadowfax Technologies is a Bengaluru-based on-demand delivery startup that connects micro-entrepreneurs, suppliers and customers across grocery, food, fashion and electronics through a singular logistics platform. Co-founded in 2015 by Abhishek Bansal (CEO) and Vaibhav Khandelwal, the platform uses an AI-based location stream processing engine called Frodo to optimize routing, costs and service levels. It operates a crowd-sourced network of more than 30,000 delivery partners and says it delivers more than 90,000 unique orders every day. The company intends to use the $22m Series C to scale operations and is projecting 150% year-on-year growth for the next five years. Shadowfax aims to connect 4 lakh new businesses and delivery partners by 2021, up from the current 40,000 connections. The company previously raised $18.5m from Eight Roads Ventures in 2015 and 2016 and acquired hyperlocal delivery business Nuvo Logistics Pvt Ltd last year. Shadowfax Technologies is a Gurgaon-based hyperlocal delivery service operating in the Delhi-NCR region. The company provides a technology-driven merchant delivery framework including integrated GPS tracking, automated routing algorithms, restaurant-preparation-time logic, automatic rider scheduling, app communication, instant feedback, geo-based tracking and location-based rider allocation. Shadowfax reports about 35 employees, 350 riders, serves 120–150 restaurant partners and claims roughly 3,000 orders per day. It was launched in May this year by Abhishek Bansal (an IIT Delhi alumnus) and Vaibhav Khandelwal, with management emphasizing technology to improve last-mile delivery efficiency. Shadowfax raised around Rs 1.90 crore ($300,000) in angel funding and will use the proceeds to expand into 10 more cities by year-end. The company also plans to broaden its logistics infrastructure beyond food delivery into multiple categories.

Led · Series F · May 2019

Founded in 2011, BigBasket operates an inventory-led online grocery model, managing its own dark stores and delivery fleet while selling a broad catalogue that includes extensive private-label offerings. In August 2024 the company fully shifted its strategy to quick commerce, making 10-minute delivery its core value proposition. Tata Digital acquired a controlling stake in May 2021, and the business has cumulatively raised more than US$1 billion from backers such as Mirae Asset, British International Investments and Bessemer Venture Partners. Despite its scale, BigBasket’s consumer-facing arm, Innovative Retail, reported flat revenue of Rs 7,673 crore for FY 2025 while losses widened to Rs 1,850 crore, underscoring the capital-intensive nature of rapid delivery. The new funds will help expand and maintain additional dark stores, a critical infrastructure component for its 10-minute promise. Management also plans to allocate a portion of proceeds to general corporate purposes as it seeks to stabilise unit economics. Overall, BigBasket remains one of India’s most heavily funded grocery platforms but continues to prioritize growth over profitability.