India B2B e-commerce player ElasticRun hits $1.5b valuation

ElasticRun joins Mamaearth, Fractal Analytics, Livspace, Darwinbox, Lead School, and Dealshare in the class of 2022. The country’s unicorn population more than doubled to 90 in 2021 and now ranks third in size after the US and China.

Goldman Sachs, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and Prosus Ventures participated in ElasticRun’s Series E, which valued the company at approximately USD 1.5bn. Vision Fund was the largest contributor, putting in USD 180m, according to regulatory filings cited by local media.

Founded in 2016, ElasticRun offers procurement and fulfilment services to a network of more than 125,000 small-scale retailers – known locally as kirana shops – spraed across 300 cities. It helps them source goods from suppliers, aggregating orders to secure bulk discounts. The company also connects retailers with financial services providers and provides data analytics services.

On the fulfilment side, ElasticRun operates a crowd-sourced fulfilment platform, enabling brands in the fast-moving consumer goods space to extend their reach into rural areas on a variable cost basis. On closing its Series D round in April 2021, it was working with more than 100 brands and managed over 500 distribution stations.

India has about 12 million kirana shops, which account for 11% of GDP and 8% of employment. About 10 million of them are in rural areas, where sales are expected to grow to USD 600bn over the next five years. They are seen as not only a means of accessing underserved consumers but as a neglected source of consumer data.

Numerous start-ups have secured private equity funding to support the rollout of technology-enabled services for the micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) community. Access to credit, ability to source and distribute, and operational digitisation are among the pain points being addressed.

ElasticRun’s USD 75m Series D was led by Prosus and Avataar Ventures. Kalaari Capital also participated by buying employee-owned shares. The three investors provided USD 40m in funding in 2019, while Kalaari has also backed four rounds between 2016 and 2018. Other backers include Norwest Venture Partners – Avataar is a Norwest spinout – and Sequoia Capital India.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Consumer
• Support services
• Expansion
• India
• Growth capital
• Prosus Ventures
• Softbank
• Goldman Sachs
• TMT
• Logistics