A year-old Bengaluru-based online retail platform, Dukaan raised $11 million as part of its pre-Series A round of funding, led by 640 Oxford Ventures. The round also saw existing investors Snow Leopard Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, and Matrix Partners India. The startup looks to broaden its offerings and deepen its footprints in the South Asian market.
Dukaan, which enables merchants to set up online stores and sell products digitally said that Ritesh Agarwal of Oyo and Carl Pei of Nothing also invested in the new round. It has raised over $17 million to date and is now valued at $71 million. Dukaanās current funding comes within a year of raising $6 million as a part of its seed funding round last October.
Funds will help boost growth
āThis new investment allows us to aggressively expand our operations while building our team of highly skilled designers and developers. Additionally, this capital accelerates our ability to establish key strategic partnerships to grow our paying merchant base,ā said Suumit Shah, chief executive officer and co-founder, Dukaan.
āWe started with our monetization journey on a small merchant base last quarter, and more than 2000 merchants have enrolled in our Dukaan premium subscription plan so far. Premium subscription is just one of the revenue streams, which contributes roughly 10% to our revenues,ā added Shah.
Brick and mortar stores boosting digital presence through this no-code offering
Founded in June last year, Dukaan provides individuals with no-code tools to set up a digital presence. This hassle-free and quick process allow local stores and entrepreneurs to launch an e-commerce website and scale it on the internet.
āSmall businesses are digitizing faster than ever in Indiaās history and Dukaanās simple yet effective SaaS product has struck a chord with these customers and enables them to grow their business online,ā said Rajinder Balaraman, director, Matrix India.
One has to verify their email address or phone number and then write their business or store name and the digital store is created with a click. Each e-commerce website powered by Dukaan is customizable in terms of design and functionality.
Further, Dukaan merchants can link their unified payments interface (UPI) ID with Dukaan and start accepting payments via various modes of digital payments.
The resilient Indian Kirana stores adapting by adopting technology
Dukaan is largely targeting Indiaās massive neighborhood market employing more than100 a million Indians and is locally famous as kiranas. In many cases, these stores have been operational for decades.
These traditional businesses have survived the onslaught of competition from firms like Reliance, Amazon and Flipkart. They have attempted but failed to disrupt these businesses and now most of these firms are increasingly exploring ways to engage with these merchants.
Since its launch, Dukaanās platform has touched over 3.5 million small and medium-sized businesses and facilitated over 1.5 million transactions to date, the company said.
āThere is a massive white space opportunity to service the commerce needs of Indiaās 100 million small businesses and the Dukaan team with its strong product orientation and deep knowledge of the small business user is ideally positioned to lead the creation of new categories of commercial businesses in India,ā said Akshay Bhushan, partner, Lightspeed.
