Bangladeshi e-commerce site Sindabad raises funding from social-impact investor Aavishkaar

Dhaka-based Sindabad, a business-to-business e-commerce site owned by Zero Gravity Ventures Ltd, has secured $4.15 million (Rs 29 crore at current exchange rate) in a Series A funding from Frontier Fund managed by Aavishkaar, India’s biggest homegrown social-impact investor by size of investments.

“This new investment in Zero Gravity’s Sindabad.com is beyond simple financing – rather, with the greater investment portfolio of Aavishkaar Ventures, we are looking to incorporate best practices and future collaboration with similar companies and startups in the region that have already succeeded in the business-to-business space,” said Asif Zahir, co-founder and managing director, Zero Gravity.

“We have seen approximately 15% month-on-month growth on Sindabad.com, and currently have more than 500 corporates and 2,000 small companies as our customers,” said Zeeshan Kingshuk Huq, co-founder and chief executive, Sindabad.

With online presence, Sindabad caters to offices and businesses in Bangladesh for their regular purchase needs. It currently offers a variety of office supplies, stationary, housekeeping items, production support, information technology equipment, electrical goods, and safety and security items.

Launched in mid-2016, Sindabad has financial institutions, pharmaceuticals and local conglomerates in its customer portfolio.

Zero Gravity has an employee strength of nearly 250 and claims to have already established three state-of-the-art warehouses and a delivery fleet in various parts of the country.

The Frontier Fund managed by Aavishkaar has made three investments so far – one each in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. It has backed US- and Indonesia-based seafood firm North Atlantic Inc., Sri Lankan food processing company MA's Foods and Bangladesh-headquartered payment solutions provider CloudWell Ltd.

Founded in 2002, Aavishkaar helps entrepreneurs via equity funding, venture debt, microfinance, investment banking intermediation, consulting, research and access to global networks. The group has assets worth of $400 million under management, and a team of around 2,500 people.