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

DealShare, the Bengaluru-based social commerce grocery startup, has raised $165 million from investors, a Saturday (Jan. 29) Economic Times report said, valuing the company at over $1.6 billion.

Tiger Global and Alpha Wave led the round. New investors were Dragoneer Investments Group, Kora Capital and Unilever Ventures.

Because of this, DealShare has become the fifth unicorn from India this year. The company, founded in 2018, works to sell daily essentials to middle-income people with a community group buying model.

With the new funding, DealShare plans to spend more on tech and data science, along with an expansion of its logistics infrastructure and making a new offline store franchise network.

CEO Vineet Rao said the company had been growing and that now it would expand to more cities.

A rival of DealShare, Meesho, reportedly raised $570 million as of September last year, U.S.-based asset manager Fidelity and Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital.

Meanwhile, Meesho also raised $300 million in April, at that time bringing its value to $2.1 billion.

The round of funding almost tripled Meesho’s value.

Meesho was the fourth Indian startup to hit unicorn status. The others included Digit, an insurance tech platform; Innovaccer, a health tech firm; and Infra.market, an online construction material marketplace.

Meesho has a target to help 100 million small businesses and entrepreneurs digitize their companies while also expanding its team — and PYMNTS wrote that this put it in competition with others like Amazon and Flipkart, which have also been working on cutting inefficiencies in distribution and using small businesses to reach customers in small towns.

Read more: Social Commerce App Meesho Raises $300 Million, Valued At $2.1 Billion

Meesho was also reported to be competing with Dealshare at that time, among other companies connecting via things like social networks.

PYMNTS wrote that social commerce was doing well in southeast Asia, with social commerce orders doubling in the first half of 2020.