DUKAAN SECURES $11 MN FUNDING FROM 640 OXFORD VENTURES, OTHERS

NEW DELHI: Dukaan, a retail platform that helps entrepreneurs to set up online store, on Monday said it has raised $11 million (about ₹80.3 crore) in funding led by 640 Oxford Ventures.

The pre-series A round also saw participation from existing investors Snow Leopard Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, and Matrix Partners India, as well as new firms—Venture Catalyst, HOF Capital, Old Well Ventures, LetsVenture and 9Unicorns.

Many high-profile executives also participated in the funding round, including OYO Room’s Ritesh Agarwal and Nothing co-founder Carl Pei.

Suumit Shah, CEO and co-founder of Dukaan, said the post-money valuation of the company after this round would be $71 million.

The company has over 3.5 million sellers, who have opened their stores using the Dukaan platform and 70% of these stores are from beyond the top six cities. Dukaan has also facilitated over 1.5 million transactions for these sellers, he told PTI.

“We founded Dukaan because we saw small businesses and first-time entrepreneurs struggling to digitise and make their presence online. We became obsessed with the idea of making the most affordable, easy-to-use, mobile-first commerce platform in the world,” he added.

Dukaan had raised $6 million in a seed round from Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Partners in October last year. Shah said the latest capital infusion will allow Dukaan to aggressively expand its operations while building its team of highly skilled designers and developers. “Additionally, this capital accelerates our ability to establish key strategic partnerships to grow our paying merchant base. We started with our monetisation journey on a small merchant base last quarter, and more than 2,000 merchants have enrolled in our Dukaan premium subscription plan so far,” he said.