P2P ecommerce platform CityMall gets seed funding

Peer-to-peer referral ecommerce platform CityMall has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors. 

Citrus Pay co-founder Jitendra Gupta and Xiaomi Indonesia’s general manager Alvin Tse, who also heads Pocophone Global, were part of the seed funding round, CityMall said in a statement on Thursday.

Hiro Mashita’s venture capital firm M&S Partners, Rajesh Sawhney of startup accelerator GSF, Manish Vij and Harish Bahl from Smile Group and Rishab Malik, co-founder of Droom, were other investors in the round.

“Peer to peer referral brings in the strongest layer of trust when it comes to making a positive decision,” said Angad Kikla, co-founder, CityMall.

The startup sells lifestyle and household products with curated special discounted deals through peer-to-peer referrals via WhatsApp. It plans to target the next 200 million customers through the messaging app.

“WhatsApp is the most penetrated social network in small town India with a maximum amount of time spent by a user on this platform. Using WhatsApp will provide very strong viewability of deals shared for our products as compared to other social platforms like SMS. We will be doubling down on leveraging WhatsApp for downstream e-commerce workflows with more languages soon,” said Divij Goyal, co-founder, CityMall.

CityMall signs deals with local manufacturers for procuring its curated set of products. For products that are manufactured in China, CityMall works with large importers. The plan is to directly procure products from China, Kikla told TechCircle.

CityMall identifies its target audience among mid-income consumers across tier-II, III and IV cities between 25-34 years of age. The company also plans to add more women-centric products in addition to more languages on the platform soon.