Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

Snapdeal.com, the biggest deals & discount internet company in India has closed $40M as series B investment led by Bessemer Ventures and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures also participated in this round. As per Kunal Bahl, Founder & CEO of Snapdeal this investment seems to be the largest Venture capital infusion in an internet company in a single round.

Interestingly Snapdeal has raised $12M in the month of January fron Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures, thus total investment raised by Snapdeal has touched $52M. Earlier it was reported by Economic Times that Snapdeal is in talks with Bessemer Ventures and existing investors to raise 200Cr at 1000Cr Valuation.

Snapdeal claims to be adding 1.5M new users every month, their merchant base has crossed 30,000 and their deals and discount are available in over 50 cities in India. Snapdeal plans to expand its team and would like to take it upto 800 within this year.

Lets take a look at their monthly traction:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	11M
Page views	34M
Total visits	18M
Avg time on site	3:20

Couple of months back Snapdeal introduced voucher of phone service. The new service allows users of snapdeal to avail deals bought from the website without having to carry a print out of the deal. The transaction is carried out through the SMS message that the customer gets on the registered mobile number after buying a deal. This initiative has given good results to the company catering to the 30% of its user base which access deals on their mobile.

In June 2010 Snapdeal has acquired Bangalore based deal startup Grabbon.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BigshoeBazaar, an online wholesaler and retailer of shoes, apparels etc has closed its series B round of investment of $9M from Narayanmurthy floated Catamaran Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. The deal was almost done after BigshoeBazaar raised its series A investment.

With this new investment Catamaran Ventures has picked up 13 per cent stake in the online firm for Rs 26 crore, Nexus Venture Partners has picked up 7 per cent stake for Rs 14 crore. The funds will be used to strengthen supply chain and setting up warehouses to support growth at the front-end,” Bigshoebazaar India Co-founder Manmohan Agarwal said.

BigshoeBazaar primarily runs a B2C portal Yebhi.com formerly known as Bigshoebazaar.com which sell footwear mainly and now it has added few more categories like Clothing, jewellery. Yebhi.com does around 4000 transactions on a daily basis. Bigshoebazaar runs a wholesale network across the country targeted at small retailers in Tier2 and Tier3 cities to source Global brands like Adidas, Nike etc. which in general don’t have access to such brands. Bigshoebazaar has also started franchisee business, where it offers shoe retailers to use it brand and retailers source the footwear from the company.

You may check out Nitin Agarwal’s interview here, Nitin is one of the Cofounder of BigShoeBazaar.

Lets look at the monthly traction at Yebhi.com:

Worldwide
Unique visitors	840K
Page views	9M
Total visits	1.2M
Avg time on site	8:50

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Exclusively.in, a private flash sale site has raised $16M from Tiger global, Accel partners India and Helion Venture Partners.  As of now the company has been targeting NRIs living in US and sells Indian attires such as saris, tunics, jewelry and very traditional wedding gowns etc.

Exclusively.in plans to utilize the fund in expanding their distribution network, doubling its workforce. Exclusively.in plans to become an international player in this space and will expand its flash sale site to 50 countries, 30 countries will be covered by this year end. Their deliveries will start to UK from the mid week of June. Exclusively.in will be catering to Indian audience from the 3rd Quarter of this year.

Like FashionandYou Exclusively.In sends out a daily email containing the several styles it has for sale. Members who subscribe to the email are able to purchase the items at a discount until the inventory is gone.

Lets have a look at their US and Worldwide traction –

Country Worldwide Unique visitors (estimated cookies) 120K 130K Unique visitors (users) 77K 92K Page views 2.1M 2.2M Total visits 260K 270K Avg visits per cookie 2.1 2 Avg time on site 8:40 8:00

Exclusively.in was founded in mid 2010 and have offices in NewYork and New Delhi currently. Exclusively.in has raised $2.8M in Nov 2010 from Helion Venture partners and Accel Partners.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

ThePrivateSales.com a flash sale site promoted by Bangalore based TPS shopping Outlet Pvt Ltd has raised $5M from a private company. ThePrivateSales was founded in mid 2010 by Sunder and Sajan Gianchandani as a flash sales website offering high-end products by Indian and global fashion labels.

Investments will primarily used in adding more brands in the inventory and also increase man power and open offices and warehouses across all the metros. Good part of Investment will go into brand building and marketing,ThePrivateSales plans to invest heavily on online and viral marketing, they would spend nearly 1Crore on it.

Unlike FashionandYou, Theprivatesales deals with high end designer labels like Versace, Renata Riggi etc. Since founders have vast experience in fashion industry they are leveraging their experience in striking fantastic deals. I personally like the categorization of products at ThePrivateSales.com, easy to find products, and like FashionandYou where all brands of a particular category are placed in one webpage. Discounts offered by ThePrivateSales are pretty good compared to other flash sale sites.

ThePrivateSales.com claims to have above 4L registered users, their monthly sales are growing at 50-60%. Major competitors in this space are – 99Labels.com, Bagittoday, Fashionandyou.com, Exclusively.in

Lets have a look at ThePrivateSales monthly traction -

ThePrivateSales.com has healthy traction, and with investments coming in its all poised to go upwards.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

FirstCry, a pune based online retailer for kids and babycare products has raised investments of $4M from SAIF Partners. The investments will be utilized in scaling up the operations, setting up the engineering team and warehouses for speedy delivery of products.

FirstCry is run by BrainBees Solutions Pvt Ltd and is founded by Sunil Maheshwari and Amitava Saha. Sunil is a serial entrepreneur and had earlier co-founded Brainvisa Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which was sold to Indecomm Global Services in 2007. Brainvisa had raised $5M from Sequoia Capital.

FirstCry has tied-up with over 100 brands like Mattel, Funskool, Hotwheels, Disney , Barbie, Zapak and offers a range of over 4,000 products including Pampers diapers, Johnson’s skincare range and cycle maker BSA’s prams and strollers. FirstCry aims to cover the complete gammut of parenting – from clothings for new mothers, babycare products and toys for little grown up kids.

Currently, it does 200 transactions a day. The portal has plans to expand to newer markets in Asia like Srilanka, Indonesia and Malaysia. As per Sunil the market size is very large – it is a $5 billion opportunity, and  growing very fast in  tier 2 and 3 cities. Around 35% of FirstCry orders come from towns and the demand is huge, considering the lack of options, access and range. It is a prime market for e-commerce firms.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BabyOye, an e-commerce startup in babycare products has raised $2.5M from Accel partners and Tiger Global. Primarily investments will be utilized in hiring people, expand its supply chain, build warehouses and increase product range.

BabyOye started by husband-wife duo – Arunima Singhdeo and Sanjay Nadkarni, an ex Infoedge executive who understands Indian online space quite well. Babyoye has tied-up with over 80 brands and offers a range of over 4,000 products, including Pampers diapers, Chicco food, Johnson’s skincare range. BabyOye certainly wants to make a mark in this multi billion dollar market.

BabyOye also offers products for new moms, making it an shopping platform for both new born babies and new mom.

Its been barely 6months they started BabyOye and managed to raise handsome series A funding from reputed VCs is just unbelievable. One of the main competitor for BabyOye is Coimbatore based Hushbabies.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BigshoeBazaar pvt ltd which runs online shoe store Yebhi.com has raised $2.2M from Nexus Venture Partners. This investment was closed in late decemeber 2010. As per Nitin Agarwal, cofounder of BigshoeBazaar talks are at advanced stage for closing another round of funding. You can checkout Nitin’s interview as part of “Walk the Talk with an Entrepreneur” here.

BigshoeBazaar primarily runs a B2C portal Yebhi.com formerly known as Bigshoebazaar.com which sell footwear mainly and now it has added few more categories like Clothing, jewelery and accessories.

Bigshoebazaar runs a wholesale network across the country targeted at small retailers in Tier2 and Tier3 cities to source Global brands like Adidas, Nike etc. which in general don’t have access to such brands.

Bigshoebazaar has also started franchisee business, where it offers shoe retailers to use it brand and retailers source the footwear from the company. Funds will be primarily used to expand the wholesale network and franchisees.

Lets Look at the monthly traction of Yebhi.com –

Personally I have been a regular user of Yebhi.com and bought multiple footwear for my family. They very prompt in servicing the clients, products are of best quality, return policy is highly user friendly.

Certainly they have strike the right mantra to crack this space. If you have used Bigshoebazaar services do share your views.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Most of the people find it difficult to maintain medical records and doesn’t find them when its needed the most , Healthizen is here to solve this problem This portal allows user  to upload their medical details – from their weight and height, doctor prescriptions, lab tests results, details of surgeries undergone, X-Ray, MRI scan, ECG and other reports.

Details on the portal are accessible anytime, anywhere and user need not carry their files and records of medical history every time they  visit a doctor.

Healthizen is a pune based startup founded by Anand Anupam, an IIT-IIM graduate. Healthizen mission is to have centralized information platform and reduce the information asymmetry in the health care space and develop the system by placing patients at the center of the ecosystem.

Ina addition to providing a ready-to-use platform for online storage, this portal has also a panel having doctors and health experts, who help the users with general health tips as well as second opinion whenever required.

Healthizen has a big shopping section where a user can find health related products like health food, specialized health accessories, portable testing equipments etc.

Lets have a look at the monthly traction at Healthizen:

Its a decent statistics to begin with, check out Healthizen and share your views.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Myntra, India’s largest online personalization company has forayed into direct selling of goods. Last week it introduced ‘Sports‘ category and its prominently displayed in their homepage. Now user can buy sports shoes, track pants, t-shirts etc from makers like Reebok, Nike, Puma etc. and yes you cannot personalized them for which Myntra is known for. Recently they closed $14M investment from global PE firm Tiger Global at a highly favorable valuation.

Is Myntra slowly and steadily transforming itself into from a boutique retailer to plain e-commerce player? But question arises why drifting away from its product mojo. Has the customization and personalization model isn’t scaling? or Is Tiger global inclination towards e-commerce space( They recently invested $10M in Flipkart and LetsBuy) making them shift gears and become an online seller.  Simple n direct selling will certainly boost the revenue.

With the introduction of this new category, they will compete with players like Yebhi(formerly bigshoebazaar).

Myntra has a good monthly traction which may have propelled them to foray into direct selling, lets look at the monthly traction -

Lets wait and watch this space, e-commerce is certainly hotting up in India.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Letsbuy, a New Delhi based e-commerce company founded by Hitesh Dhingra and Amanpreet Bajaj  in mid 2009 has raised an investment of $6M in series A round from Helion Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Tiger Global.

LetsBuy.com is an online retailer of consumer electronics, telecommunication products, laptops and computers peripherals, they deliver goods through out India. Earlier Hitesh Dhingra was the co-founder and Business Head of online advertising firm Quasar Media Pvt Ltd and Tyroo Media.

“LetsBuy.com in on the fast-growth path and the VC funding from the leaders in the space will only spur us on. The funds would be deployed in strengthening customer service, technology and supply chain processes,” said Dhingra, Founder & CEO, LetsBuy.com.

“India has witnessed tremendous growth in e-commerce and Letsbuy has been part of that growth. The team has the vision to have identified a very compelling opportunity and the execution skills to deliver to it,” said Ashish Gupta, Managing Director, Helion Venture Partners.

“The LetsBuy.com team has the vision and the business acumen to identify opportunities and make them stepping stones towards growth. In the process they present the best offerings to their customers and meet the goals chalked out by the partner investors. The strategy and plans match those valued by the Accel Partners team,” said Prashanth Prakash, Partner, Accel Partners.

If you compare the online traction of Infibeam, Futurebazaar and Letsbuy, letsbuy is catching up with Futurebazaar

Interestingly Letsbuy compete with Flipkart (also a portfolio company of tiger global and Accel Partners) in category like ‘Mobiles’.

I am impressed with wide range of payment options available for users at Letsbuy for order fulfillment, except for payment through mobile they have covered everything -

e-commerce space in India is very big enough to sustain and grow multiple payers. Online retailer with superior customer service, competitive pricing and quick delivery time will be successful.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com