E-commerce portal GoZefo raises $1 mn funding led by Helion Venture Partners

Bangalore-based GoZefo, an e-commerce portal marketplace for second hand and factory seconds goods run by Zero Effort Technologies Pvt. Ltd has raised $1.05 million (Rs 6.9 cr) in funding led by Helion Venture Partners, according to the filings with the Registrar of Companies (ROC).

BeeNext, a Singapore-based early-stage technology venture fund, also participated in the funding round.

The funding round comes 15 months after the company had raised $800,000 in funding from Helion Venture Partners and other investors, according to the data available with VCCEdge, the data and research platform of News Corp VCCircle.

E-mail queries sent to GoZefo seeking more details about the deal didn't elicit a response at the time of filing this report.

GoZefo was founded by Arjit Gupta, Rohit Ramasubramanian, Himesh Joshi and Karan Gupta in 2015.

Ramasubramanian, a graduate from IIT-Madras, and Karan Gupta, a graduate from IIT-Delhi, have both worked with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Helion Venture Partners prior to GoZefo.

Joshi, also a graduate from IIT-Delhi, was working with BCG as a consultant before founding GoZefo while Arjit Gupta is a graduate from IIIT-Allahabad and was associated with companies like Flipkart, Amazon and Adobe.

GoZefo currently operates in Bangalore, Mysore, Delhi-NCR and Mumbai and allows users to buy and sell second hand and factory seconds furniture and appliances. The company currently deals with televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and microwaves under the appliances category. In the furniture category, it offers sofas, dining tables etc.

Bangalore-based home design and décor startup Livspace has secured $8 million (Rs 41.84 crore) in a fresh round of funding from existing investors Helion Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jungle Ventures.

Beenext Pte. Ltd. is a venture capital fund with $60 million assets under the management. It provides early stage capital to the companies operating in India, Southeast Asia, Japan and the US. It seeks to invest in information technology specialized in internet and mobile-related businesses.

It had recently put money in Mumbai-based White Shadow Technology Pvt. Ltd that operates online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Bharat Bazaar.

"The way I see it is that it is a very interesting market. What would be important for this market will be if they could create a secondary warranty market or secondary insurance kind of market. This market also opens up other markets. It is a good start for the ecosystem and there is a good future ahead," said, Anirudh Damani, partner at Artha India Ventures.

Like this report? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our top reports.