Local discovery platform LBB raises $5M from Inventus India, and IAN Fund

Little Black Book (LBB), a platform to find and shop from local brands and businesses, has raised $5 million in Series A round of funding.

The funding round was led by Inventus India, and IAN Fund with participation from Japanese investors Dream Incubator, and Akatsuki Entertainment Technology (AET) Fund, and existing investors Blume Ventures, and Chiratae Ventures.

With this round, LBB has raised a total of $7.5 million.

This Delhi-based company plans to use the funds to expand its technology and product team with a focus on machine learning.

Commenting on the fund raise, Dhruv Mathur, Co-founder of LBB, said,

“Our next phase of growth will be primarily focused on integrating discovery with commerce and open up a platform and space for SMBs in India. Our thesis is that small to medium businesses find it very difficult to get discovered on social media and large marketplaces - LBB seeks to solve that, and give today's young consumer access to new brands and businesses.”

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Founded by Suchita Salwan and Dhruv, LBB is currently present across eight cities in India, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Goa, and Chennai.

The company also plans to strengthen its footprint in its existing markets and scale by integrating discovery with commerce for small and medium size businesses and help them sell on its platform.

The company claims that the newly launched content to commerce on the platform is witnessing a 30 percent MoM growth, with over 500 brands and more than 15,000 products selling through LBB.

Dhruv added that the company plans to expand to over 10 cities including non-metro ones in 2020.

LBB today claims to have over 3.5 million users every month, connecting users to over 60,000 local brands and businesses.

Rutvik Doshi, Managing Director, Inventus India said, “The LBB team has built a product and brand that’s garnered immense organic traction and loyalty pan-India. What attracted us most to LBB is how they’ve made community a continued narrative in their promise to make local brands and businesses more accessible. They have demonstrated their ability in building a platform that consumer’s love, while also building a robust monetisation model that’s powered their growth.”

With a current team strength of 85 people, the company aims to achieve around 120 people by the end of 2019.

Commenting on the investment, Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner at Blume Ventures said,

“LBB has grown phenomenally in the past few years driven by Suchita and Dhruv’s inspiring leadership and stellar execution. They are reinventing how content, recommendations and information can drive meaningful connects and enable seamless commerce between users and businesses.”

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