Quickr looks to raise up to $150 million
BENGALURU: Quikr India Pvt. Ltd, which runs an online classifieds and services portal, is in talks to raise between $100 million and $150 million by keeping its record valuation of $1 billion, said three people familiar with the matter.
Quikr plans to raise the fresh funds from both existing and new investors, said the people mentioned above, requesting anonymity. Mint could not immediately identify the potential new investors.
“Quikr is trying to raise the round at the $1 billion valuation. Till one year ago, they were in bad shape and burning a lot. But they’ve worked a lot towards becoming unit economics positive (an indicator of a startup’s ability to generate profits in future) and now they’re confident that the business is in good enough shape to maintain the valuation,” said one of the three people mentioned above.
A spokeswoman for Quikr did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Quikr’s faith in its fund-raising strategy stems from a wider boom in funding in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Of late, several mid- to late-stage start-ups
IF QUIKR MANAGES TO RAISE FUNDS SUSTAINING ITS $1 BN VALUATION, IT WOULD MARK A TURNING POINT FOR THE COMPANY
have been raising multiple rounds of capital in rapid succession at increasingly higher valuations.
Mint reported on August 6 that investors have already struck nearly two dozen deals of $100 million or more this year, compared with 22 last year, while at least a dozen more such deals, including mega funding rounds at Oyo, Byju’s, Swiggy and Zomato, ShareChat, BigBasket and others, are in the works.
If Quikr manages to raise funds sustaining its $1 billion valuation, it would mark a turning point for the company, which at one stage sought to become India’s Craigslist, a popular online classifieds site in the US.
However, the company faced tough competition from Olx, owned by South Africa’s media and e-commerce company Naspers. Quikr sought to grow by buying companies and creating a diverse range of businesses.
In an interview last year, founder and chief executive Pranay Chulet said Quikr generates half of its revenue from the companies it has acquired. However, this has not worked out as well as Quikr expected.
Its plans received a helping hand from one of its key investors, AB Kinnevik of Sweden, which holds a 17% stake in Quikr.
The investor has disclosed that the fair value of its holding is marked at about $178 million for the period ending June 30, 2018, according to its latest interim report—implying that Quikr’s current valuation stands at about $1.03 billion.