OfBusiness to raise up to $150 mn from Vision Fund 2 at $1.3 bn valuation

Gurugram based OFB Tech, which operates B2B marketplace OfBusiness, is in talks to raise up to $150 million from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The round is expected to value the startup at $1.3 billion, two people aware of the transaction said.

Email queries to SoftBank and OFB Tech went unanswered at press time. 

OfBusiness would mark the latest investment for SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 in India this year. Late last month, the fund, backed by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp, led a $250 million equity funding round in banking technology startup Zeta, catapulting the Bhavin Turakhia led startup’s valuation to $1.45 billion. Other Indian bets from the fund include social commerce platform Meesho, eyewear brand Lenskart and edtech firm Unacademy. 

OfBusiness was founded in 2015 by Asish Mohapatra, Ruchi Kalra, Vasant Sridhar and Bhuvan Gupta. According to a valuation report dated March 31, 2021, its parent OFB Tech was valued at close to Rs 4,553 crore ($623.7 million), with a gross profit of Rs 143 crore, as on the date of valuation.  

The nearly seven-year-old company last raised capital in April this year when an investor consortium led by returning investor Falcon Edge Capital pumped in $110 million. The round also saw a secondary component with the exit of 12 angel investors and ESOP liquidation worth $13 million by 73 employees.   

Apart from the B2B marketplace, OFB Tech also operates small and medium enterprise financing platform Oxyzo and O’AgriFarm, a global agri-product fulfilment and financing platform which works with companies such as Godrej, Zomato and Reliance, serving their agri-product supply chain. O’AgriFarm is headed by Nitin Jain. OFB Tech also operates BidAssist, an SME business opportunity platform to bid for private and government tenders.  

The book value of Oxyzo for the financial year 2020-21 was estimated to be Rs 733.8 crore according to the report.  

The company works with manufacturing sub-sectors including heavy machinery, consumer goods, agri-business and others and had raised $200 million in debt over the last year from 40 lending partners to finance its growth during the pandemic and resultant national lockdown. 

OFB Tech’s B2B marketplace competes directly with industrial goods marketplace Moglix in which Falcon Edge Capital is a common investor. Moglix was admitted to the unicorn league last month when it raised $120 million in a funding round led by Falcon Edge Capital and Harvard Management Company.  

SoftBank has thus far backed 95 companies from its second fund. It upped the target corpus of the second fund to $30 billion as of May 11, 2021, according to its latest earnings presentation. SoftBank Group Corp will be the sole limited partner in the fund. As of November 2020, the fund had a target corpus of $10 billion.