With just 30 employees and three warehouses, Boxed, a mobile application for wholesale shopping, has raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding.
The round was led by GGV Capital and Digital Sky Technologies, with participation from Founders Fund, AME Cloud Ventures, Vaizra Investments. This brings Boxed’s total funding to $33 million in the bag from VCs. First launched in 2013, Boxed specializes in getting U.S. customer bulk goods delivered with the tap of a smart phone.
Boxed is not alone in the space – or at least, it won’t be for long. Jet.com, founded by Marc Lore, has raised $80 million and is planning to launch within the next month. Lore is better known for founding Diapers.com, which he sold to Amazon in 2009.
Both Boxed and Jet aim to mimic the big box club retailers like Sam’s Club and Costco and essentially become their online analog. Sam’s Club and Costco have their own mobile apps but have not seen much traction on mobile so far. Sam’s Club, for example, does around $50 billion in annual sales, but only 1 percent of that is online, reports Fortune.
