Social commerce platform Shop101 raises $3.9 mn from returning investors

O(1) India, a Mumbai-based company that enables small merchants to create mobile storefronts and sell products via social media, has raised $3.9 million in a fresh funding round led by returning investor Vy Capital.

The company’s other existing investors Kalaari Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners and Unilever Ventures, the investment unit of London headquartered fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) major Unilever, participated in the round, its latest regulatory filings showed.

The latest infusion, which takes the total capital raised by Shop101 to about $20 million, comes more than a year after the company closed its last funding round. 

In December 2018, the company raised $11 million in a Series B round from Kalaari Capital, Unilever Ventures, Stellaris Venture Partners, Vy Capital and Ramakant Sharma, co-founder of home decor startup Livspace. In July 2018, it raised $5 million in a Series A round led by Stellaris Venture Partners along with Vy Capital, TaxiForSure co-founder Raghunandan G and Livspace founder Sharma.

In the latest round, O(1) India issued 1,66,812 Series C1 preference shares at Rs 1,720 per share, the filings, dated March 12 showed. 

Emailed queries to the company from TechCircle on the latest funding round were unanswered at the time of publishing this report.

Founded in 2015 by Abhinav Jain and Aditya Gupta, Shop101 enables merchants and other small ticket sellers, including housewives, college students and young graduates to sell products primarily via social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

Jain, a IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, earlier worked at Bain & Company and Microsoft Research. Gupta, who also studied at IIT Kanpur, has worked at Oracle and Deutsche Bank.

Shop101 competes with players such as Meesho, GlowRoad and Bulbulshop in the social ecommerce space. 

While Shop101 has not evinced interest from new investors so far, Meesho received backing from Naspers and Facebook last year. Meesho raised $125 million in a funding round led by the South African consumer internet investment company along with Facebook and returning investors, making it the highest funded startup in the segment.

In 2019, women-centric social ecommerce platform GlowRoad raised $11.5 million in a Series B round from Korea Investment Partners, Singapore-based Vertex Ventures, Accel and private equity firm CDH Investments.