[Funding alert] GoKwik raises Rs 112 Cr in Series A investment led by Sequoia Capital India

Ecommerce enablement firm GoKwikhas raised Series A funding of Rs 112 crore ($15 million) led by Sequoia Capital India. The round also saw participation from existing investors Matrix Partners India and RTP Global.

The new investment will be primarily used for doubling the size of the product and tech teams and hiring best-in-class talent and subject matter experts, to enable the development of innovative products to increase conversion rates across the funnel as well as make the existing offerings more robust.

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Commenting on the fundraising, Chirag Taneja, Co-founder and CEO, GoKwik said, “Ecommerce enablement players will play a pivotal role in fuelling the burgeoning Indian e-retail market which is projected to touch $120 billion in next four to five years. Conversion rates across the funnel and RTO are major pain points for any ecommerce business, and an ecommerce enablement player like GoKwik bringing network advantage is best poised to solve these problems."

He said the fundraise from Sequoia Capital India is a strong validation of GoKwik's promise, hyper-growth of the business, and scalable product-market fit (PMF) of the offerings.

"We are amongst the fastest growing B2B2C businesses and are poised to redraft the traditional playbook by offering personalised solutions to improve overall conversion rates, help register higher GMV with increased ROI and provide protection against risks such as RTO to ecommerce and D2C brands," said Chirag.

GoKwik had previously raised Rs 40 crore ($5.5 million) in a pre-Series A round led by Matrix Partners India in September 2021. Their clients include marquee names in the Indian ecommerce space such as Mamaearth, Good Glamm Group (Myglamm), LimeRoad, EyeMyEye, boAt, ManMatters, OZiva, The Souled Store, Noise, VMart. GoKwik has also recently partnered with Fynd to power the online presence of some of the most iconic global brands in India. 

On partnering with GoKwik, Aman Gupta, Co-founder and CMO of India’s leading audio and wearable brand, boAt, said, “GoKwik has been solving really pertinent problems like conversion rates and RTO for the online commerce sector. For the D2C opportunity to grow to $100 billion by 2025, enablers like GoKwik are going to play a very pivotal role. Very excited to benefit from GoKwik’s solutions and looking forward to more innovative products from GoKwik”

The startup was founded by Chirag, Vivek Bajpai, and Ankush Talwar. During his stint as a CRO at one of India’s leading D2C brands, Bombay Shaving Company, Chirag had first-hand experience with a number of problems like lower CoD conversion rates, RTO orders, rising acquisition costs, among others, that he felt were commonly faced by the entire industry.

This led to the idea of GoKwik, which aims to democratise the shopping experience by providing a tech and data science layer to increase the GMV of ecommerce businesses across India, which forms the base of GoKwik’s ‘merchant-first’ philosophy. 

Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital India, commented: “We are witnessing stunning growth in ecommerce in India, specifically in social commerce platforms and D2C brands, many of whom Sequoia Capital India has partnered with. The sector will do >$50 billion of GMV this year. The GoKwik team has identified a brilliant wedge into this market to solve merchants’ pain points of cart conversions at checkout and high returns on COD. We believe that GoKwik will be an important enabler to the ecosystem, solving multiple needs of merchants over time.” 

The company stated — "With its remote-first approach, it is one of the few companies in India being built remotely, which has enabled it to hire talent without any geographic restrictions and scale its team so fast. It also plans to partner with more players in the ecommerce and D2C ecosystem and support the overall internet economy of India."

Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Matrix Partners India, commented: “GoKwik is on a mission to enable ecommerce companies to offer best-in-class shopping experience to customers while improving their conversion rates and margins. In a short period of time, they have achieved a clear product-market fit with a large number of top direct to consumer brands and other ecommerce platforms working with them now. We're excited to double down on our investment in GoKwik and welcome Sequoia Capital India to the partnership.”