[Funding alert] CII Chairman for startups and entrepreneurship invests in B2B marketplace Pumpkart

Dinesh Dua, Chairman, Entrepreneurship and Startups, Confederation of Indian Industry - North India (CII), has made an undisclosed amount of angel investment in Pumpkart, a Punjab-based online B2B platform.

KS Bhatia, Co-founder and CEO of Pumpkart, said,

“Dinesh Dua shall be joining the board of Pumpkart, and under his mentorship, the company would scale to new heights.” 

This is the first angel investment by Dua, who is at present the CEO of Nectar Life Sciences Ltd and Chairman of Pharmexcil, Ministry of Commerce, GOI.

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Founded in 2014 by KS Bhatia, Pumpkart began as a B2C company by selling water pumps online. The startup pivoted earlier this year into a B2B platform. It has also added multiple categories to serve its retail clientele across states like Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

In a statement, the startup said that the Punjab Government is aggressively supporting Pumpkart, to bring the state's MSMEs onboard the startup's platform. 

Dua believes that this is not only a great milestone for Pumpkart but, would also give a great boost to the MSMEs of Punjab by giving them easy access to the domestic market. He also says that this step was probably the tipping point which led him to invest in Pumpkart.

At present a bootstrapped startup, Pumpkart is expanding to states beyond Punjab. Dua specifically mentions this as the strength of a startup, as a bootstrapped organisation is more careful with external investment.

In May 2019, Pumpkart’s Co-founder Manish Saini said that the startup will bring at least 25,000 retailers and over 100 services franchises on board in the next 18 months. As of now, the company has 2,000 products in four categories, 6,000 retailers and 13 service centres on board. 

(Edited by Suman Singh)

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