India’s DealShare Hits $1.7B Valuation After $210M Funding Round

DealShare, an Indian social commerce platform, has raised $210 million in Series E funding, according to a report Thursday (Feb. 17) from The Economic Times of India.

$45 million came from the wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, bringing DealShare’s valuation to $1.7 billion. Other investors in the round included Tiger Global, Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital, Unilever Ventures and Alpha Wave Global.

The company sells daily essentials and groceries, and DealShare’s capabilities include making for-demand aggregation through “the consumer-led virility model of social commerce.”

DealShare’s community-led virality model has helped cut fulfillment costs to 5-6% of the order cost — for regular eCommerce, it’s around 20%, co-founder Sourjyendu Medda told the Times.

Per the report, the company plans to use the funding to strengthen tech and product innovation. Vineet Rao, one of DealShare’s four founders, said the money would “strengthen our customer base and technology capabilities.”

“We aim to democratize online shopping,” Rao added.

Medda told the Times that the company’s strength could be found in its expansion to the grocery space, which it believed was an important decision.

“For social commerce to work we need virality in the mass consumers,” Medda said. “That will only happen when the deals are relevant to the larger population.”

PYMNTS wrote that the company was recently named a new unicorn, having raised $165 million in January, in which Tiger Global and Alpha Wave participated, among others.

See also: India’s Social Commerce Platform DealShare Hit Unicorn Status; Valued at $1.6B

DealShare was the fifth unicorn from India in the past year, and Rao said at that time that the company wanted to expand its services to more cities.

The company used its January funding to spend more on tech and dating science and expand its logistics infrastructure, along with making a new offline store franchise network.