Gurgaon-based online retailer Shopclues.com has become India’s latest startup unicorn—a privately held firm valued at over $1 billion (Rs6,695 crore).
The company said today (Jan.12) that it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a series E round led by Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC at a valuation of $1.1 billion. Existing investors—Tiger Global and Nexus Venture Partners—also participated in this round. The company had last raised $100 million (Rs.670 crore) in January 2015.
The list of Indian unicorns currently includes e-commerce biggies Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, and Quikr, ride-hailing startup Ola, and restaurant-discovery portal Zomato.
While Shopclues did not disclose the amount raised in the recent round, sources told Quartz that the company had mopped up ”a little over $100 million”.
It will now use the funds for new products aimed at small and medium enterprises that sell through its platform. The funds will also be used to strengthen the firm’s cloud technology capabilities, a press release said.
Shopclues was founded in 2011 by former Wall Street analyst Sandeep Aggarwal, who resigned in 2013 following insider trading charges. It has since been led by co-founder and CEO Sanjay Sethi and co-founder and chief business officer Radhika Aggarwal (Sandeep Aggarwal’s wife).
The company now aims to turn profitable and go for an initial public offering (IPO) by 2017. “We are confident that our capital efficiency and execution will make this our last fund-raise before we become profitable, with the eventual IPO in 2017,” Radhika Aggarwal said in the press release.