Amritsar, NFA Post: As part of its seed funding round, Dukaan, a startup that helps local stores to sell their products online, has raised $6 million. The funding round was co-led by Matrix Partners India and Lightspeed India Partners.
The round also saw participation from close to 13 marquee angel investors. This included founding Chief Executive Officer of Network18 and Viacon 18, Haresh Chawla; Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover; Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta; Razorpay founder Shashank Kumar; and Cred founder Kunal Shah, among others.
Dukaan plans to utilise this new fund to expand its services to 60 million small and mid-sized merchants across several categories like books, consumer goods, fashion, electronics, grocery, and professional services.
The startup also plans to leverage the funding to expand its geographic operations and enhance its product suite and help merchants widen their digital footprint.
Founded early this year, Dukaan enables small retailers with zero programming skills to set up an online store. Besides this, each merchant gets a unique store link on which they can showcase their products or services and further share this link with customers over social media channels.
“Our mission is to enable each and every small retailer to launch, compete and grow their business online, without ever worrying about technology. Our customers love us and we are excited to continue to pursue our mission, with support from Lightspeed, Matrix and our angels,” Dukaan Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Suumit Shah said.
Since its launch, the startup has already onboarded over 2.7 million merchants on its platform across India.
“What got us most excited about Dukaan was the team and their missionary zeal in enabling small retailers to go online. We are proud to support the Dukaan team from day one, as they create this platform and leverage the digital tailwind that almost every industry and sector is seeing today,” Lightspeed India partner Akshay Bhushan said.
Dukaan’s power stores have generated over 600,000 orders in the last three months, generating a total gross merchandise value of over 100 crore rupees, the company said..
“Dukaan aims to digitise millions of Indian merchants and empower them to take their business online. Small businesses are turning to technology faster than ever to survive the pandemic, and Dukaan® makes it easier than ever to start, run and grow a business online. We’re excited to partner with Suumit and the team on this journey towards a Digital India,” Matrix India Managing Director Tarun Davda said.
Covid-19 spread and resultant lockdown made several kiranas to adopt technology to reach out to more customers. A recent survey by management consultancy EY showed that almost 20% of kirana store owners started leveraging online platforms to get a steady supply of goods and assistance in deliveries.
