Indian social e-commerce platform DealShare receives $100 million in Series D funding

Having just completed its previous US$21 million Series C financing ( December 2020 ), Indian social commerce transaction platform DealShare immediately launched a US$100 million Series D financing.

Indian news outlet Entrackr reported late Monday that DealShare was in talks to raise between $70 million and $100 million.

TechCrunch reported that according to two people familiar with the matter, New York-based Tiger Global has led a $100 million Series D financing round for DealShare, an Indian social commerce startup that was founded only three years ago .

DealShare's operating model. Image source: Bain & Company

It is reported that DealShare's investors include WestBridge, Falcon Edge Capital's Alpha Wave, Z3Partners and Omidyar Network. Tiger Global declined to comment.

DealShare started as an e-commerce platform on WhatsApp, offering hundreds of products to consumers, but soon discovered a major consumer spending pattern: Indian consumers were only interested in items sold at discounted prices.

Over time, this concept has become part of DealShare’s core service. Today, it incentivizes consumers to share deals with their friends by offering discounts and cashback. The startup has launched its own app and website and is currently operating in more than 20 cities in India.

While Amazon and Flipkart have been able to carve out a market for themselves in urban India, large parts of the country remain underserved. Today, Amazon and Flipkart have less than 3% of the retail market share in India , leaving a huge space for other e-commerce companies to explore alternative models.

Social commerce is one of the bets we see in this new market in India. Meesho, the leading social commerce company in India , also became a unicorn last week with a valuation of $2.1 billion, led by Microsoft. Another attractive bet is to digitize neighborhood stores that do not have much social element in thousands of towns, cities and villages in India.

The social commerce sector, which includes startups such as Meesho, Dealshare, Mall91, Shop101 and Bulbul, is expected to be worth $7 billion by fiscal 2025, according to management consultancy Redseer.

India

Social Commerce

Financing