Sterne India Pvt. Ltd, which operates retail-technology platform Arzooo, has raised $70 million (around Rs 539 crore) in a Series B funding round from SBI Investment, the investment arm of Japan’s SBI Group and Trifecta Leaders Fund, the company said on Wednesday.
The round also saw participation from food delivery platform, Doordash’s founder Tony Xu with existing investors Celesta Capital and 3Lines Venture Capital participating in this round.
The company will use the fresh capital to scale its technology and focus on expansion with an aim to deepen its vertical play in the $65 billion consumer electronics market in India.
Arzooo had previously raised Series A funding from Celesta and 3Lines, followed by an investment from Zoom founder Eric Yuan.
“While the last decade has been about the proliferation of new-age economies, the internet was still seen as a rival to offline retail and the retailer community has been at the receiving end for a while. Today, technology is making a fast pace inroad into brick and mortar and we want to be at the forefront of this revolution while catalysing it by enabling next generation retail for lakhs of neighbourhood stores. Arzooo is essentially eliminating the barrier of size, scale and capital for medium and small stores while democratizing retail in India,” said Khushnud Khan, co-founder, chief executive officer, Arzooo.
DC advisory served as an adviser for Arzooo.
Arzooo was founded in 2018 by Khan and Rishi Raj Rathore, both former Flipkart colleagues and IIT-Kharagpur alumni. The company works with over 30,000 retailers allowing them to scale without the challenges of extensive inventory holding and access to pricing, the company said.
Arzooo had last raised an undisclosed amount in funding from Zoom Video Communications Inc. founder Eric Yuan and Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Bill Tai. The startup had raised $7.5 million in Series A funding from US-based technology venture fund WRVI Capital, 3Lines Venture Capital, the UAE-based Jabbar Internet and other investors it didn’t name at the time.
Established in 1999, the SBI Group has been providing financial services in a broad range of fields including securities, banking and insurance. In addition to its financial services business, the entity also has an asset management arm, focusing on investment in venture companies.
This week, Japan-based SBI invested $40 million in a business-to-business digital marketplace for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), Solv
“Arzooo’s business model is capital efficient and can meet the increasingly diversified requirements of both retail shops and end customers. It is also great for them to have built a self-branded functional logistics system, which is one of the most important parts of the business. There is no limit to the company’s future and we would like to fully support the company in their way to great success,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, chairman, president, SBI investment.
