Social e-commerce and online grocery platform CityMall on Thursday said it has raised $11million as part of its Series A funding round, led by Accel Partners. Existing investors Elevation Capital, Jungle Ventures and WaterBridge Ventures also participated in the round.
The proceeds will be employed to strengthen CityMall’s supply chain, logistics network, and expand its footprint to 20 new cities in tier 2, 3 and 4 markets. It aims to increase its network to more than 2 lakh customers by 2022.
The latest funding comes six months after it raised $3 million as part of its seed funding led by Elevation Capital.
“India’s next 300 million Internet users from smaller cities, towns, and villages depend on assisted commerce formats driven by pricing, trust and feasibility to encourage online purchase for everyday products. The accelerated pace of our growth in the past 10 months is a testimony of our ability to create a sustainable and effective model to address the challenges faced by traditional e-commerce models in Tier 2, 3 and 4 markets of India,” said Angad Kikla, co-founder, CityMall.
Two-year-old CityMall is a social e-commerce platform that sells lifestyle, grocery, and curated products via peer-to-peer referrals on WhatsApp, across tier 2, 3 and 4 towns and cities.
“Grocery in Tier 2 geographies is a very large opportunity, which has remained untapped because of unique challenges that traditional e-commerce models have struggled to address. Citymall’s community group buying model has allowed it to bridge this gap and offer a high trust and super convenient purchase experience (while being price competitive),” said Akarsh Shrivastava, vice president, Elevation Capital.
CityMall has close to 20,000 resellers that serve over 2 lakh customers across their communities.
“At Accel we’re deep believers in the power of the internet to improve quality of life. The first generation of internet access left 100 of millions of Indian consumers untouched and now democratic access to affordable mobile internet has opened up the opportunity. We hope Citymall sets an example for Indian founders to innovate and serve the next 500mn Indian consumers,” said Pratik Agarwal, vice president, Accel Partners.
