Shotang raises $5 million from Exfinity Venture Partners and Unitus Impact Livelihoods Fund
Begaluru-based B2B e-commerce marketplace Shotang has raised $ five million in Series A funding from venture capital Exfinity Venture Partners and Unitus Impact Livelihoods Fund. The company plans to invest it on expanding its team, spreading its reach in the top 10 cities in the country and strengthening its core technology infrastructure over the next one year.
Anterpreet Singh, Co-founder & Megamind, Shotang, said, “Shotang is transforming the way the traditional retail distribution channels have operated thus far in emerging economies. We believe we are poised to lend disruptive growth and efficiency to the traditional distribution channels, which comprises 15 million retailers, over 1,00,000 distributors and nearly 20,000 manufacturers. This will lead to the creation of a truly omni-channel ecosystem.”
Rebranded in May 2013, Shotang is an online marketplace for retailers, distributors and manufacturers to discover, transact and manage their businesses. It aims to enable millions of small and medium retailers to order and pay online for the entire inventory that they sell from their offline stores.
Anterpreet added that the distributors are able to grow their business significantly and manage their business with higher productivity. Manufacturers also stand to benefit from the dramatically higher visibility for their sales data on Shotang and faster time-to-market.
The company currently has presence in two metros with nearly 3,000 retailers transacting every week. In the last six months, Shotang has sold goods worth over $ six million and raised its seed round a year ago from Bitchemy Ventures.
On the funding, Jayaroopa Jeyabarathi, Principal, Unitus Impact Livelihoods Fund, said, “Shotang is empowering unorganised Indian retailers by changing the way retailers purchase goods and manage their systems.”
YourStory take
The Indian retail distribution market is estimated at about $630 billion and comprises over 15 million retailers. These retailers sell products across several categories such as FMCG, mobile handsets, apparel, consumer durables and pharmaceuticals and so on.
In the past few months, many platforms like Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart have aggressively tried to exploit the B2B segment. However, every platform has been trying to approach the segment differently.
In the B2B segment, there are many platforms but Shotang denies facing direct challenge from any one of them as it claims to solve the issue in a different way from others.