MogliLabs, which owns and operates B2B industrial goods marketplace Moglix, has raised $60 million (about Rs 412 crore) in its latest funding round led by Tiger GlobalManagement and Sequoia Capital.
The latest equity financing round, which closed last month, comes about four months after the Singapore and Noida-based company brought Flipkart Chief Executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy on board as an investor, and who had participated in his personal capacity.
The round, which also comes about seven months after it closed its $23 million Series C round, values the company at about $200-$300 million, doubling what it commanded last time, according to sources. Rahul Garg, chief executive of Moglix, declined to share specifics, citing confidentiality agreements signed with investors.
Hong Kong-based Composite Capital has also come on board as a new investor. This is the second investment in India by the firm, which was founded in 2016 by David Ma, the former partner at Hillhouse Capital, having earlier put money in ClearTax last year.
“India has a complex economy and infrastructure. A number of the country’s startups, along with the government, are actually building the backbone of the company…We are living at a positive time, and the efficiencies that have being delivered in consumer commerce, will also come to B2B commerce,” Garg told ET.
The Moglix investment is the latest one by New York-based Tiger Global, which has been amongst the most active risk capital investors in India over the course of 2019, after a three-year period which saw it stay away from Asia’s third-largest economy.
“We are excited to partner with Moglix, which is rapidly transforming procurement services for India’s B2B market. As an industry leader with a strong management team, Moglix is poised for continued strong growth,” Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global Management, said in a prepared statement.
Over the last seven months, the investment firm, which had emerged as one of the most active investors in the country in 2010-2015 and made its name through prescient bets on Flipkart and Ola, is now primarily focused on the Indian B2B startups space, having backed NinjaCart, Open Financial, Zenoti and CleverTap, among others.
Moglix, which also counts Accel Partners India and US, International Finance Corp, the private investment arm of the World Bank, former WhatsApp senior executive Neeraj Arora, and Ratan Tata among its list of backers, has now raised north of $100 million across rounds.
The company will primarily use the proceeds to ramp up infrastructure. Moglix is currently present in 14 locations, and plans to be in 22-25 industrial hubs.
“We will be investing heavily in infrastructure, warehousing, logistics. We will be building fulfillment centres and warehouses, and establish operations at these locations. Today, we are sitting on 75,000 square feet of warehousing, and will get to 200,000-250,000 square feet in the first phase,” Garg said.
The Indian indirect purchase market is currently worth $50 billion-plus and is estimated to grow to $100 billion by 2025.
“Moglix is building two unique assets simultaneously — physical infrastructure and a direct-to-enterprise distribution to re-imagine indirect procurement in India,” Tejeshwi Sharma, principal at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said.
Source: Economic Times