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India’s ShopClues eyes $50m growth round

  • Mirzaan Jamwal
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Online marketplace ShopClues.com is looking to raise a further $30-50 million from investors, after January’s $10 million round from Helion Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Japan’s Netprice, which is backed by CyberAgent and Dentsu.

According to the Business Standard, the Gurgaon-based company has initiated talks with Warburg Pincus, SoftBank, Digital Sky Technologies and Goldman Sachs for the new round of funding, which is expected to close by year-end.

Sandeep Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of ShopClues, said the company was looking at one more round of "growth funding" before its plans to go public in 2016.

ShopClues started in November 2011 with an initial investment of $250,000 and has raised $16 million so far. The company claims to sell goods with an annual gross merchandise value (GMV) of about INR2.5 billion ($41.5 million). It expects GMV to cross the $1 billion threshold by 2016, with net revenue reaching about $100 million, after which it plans to list on NASDAQ.

This week the company appointed Vishal Sharma as vice president in charge of strategic initiatives. He will help expand the website's community of merchants and incubate new categories. Sharma was previously business lead at B2B marketplace Indiamart.com and vice president at GE Consumer Finance.

Forrester Research estimates the Indian e-commerce market was worth $1.6 billion last year and will grow to reach $8.8 billion in 2016.

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