What’s fuelling B2B unicorn ElasticRun’s growth trajectory?

In this week’s Turning Point, we look at B2B ecommerce unicorn ElasticRun which helps brands reach kirana stores in rural India

Saturday February 26, 2022 , 3 min Read

Good Morning,

ElasticRun recently secured $330 million in its Series E round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and joined India’s expanding unicorn club.

Founded by former DHL employees Sandeep Deshmukh, Saurabh Nigam, and Shitiz Bansal, the Pune-based business-to-business (B2B) startup was born in 2016.

The startup connects thousands of kiranas across the country with top brands. Its turning point, the founders say, arrived two years ago.

During April-May 2020, brands were looking at the rural market as the next frontier for growth, where companies needed scalable technology. ElasticRun already had the technology platform to aggregate brands and the crowdsourced-logistic and store network in place.

“It really changed our fortunes,” Sandeep tells YourStory, “We went on to record an exponential growth rate.”

“The business we would have done in a full year just happened in a month, and then every month, we were adding more than a year's revenue,” he adds. Read more.

Editor’s Pick: Diginoor

Shaamil Karim and Yash Rathod launched Diginoor – a Delaware-headquartered NFT marketplace – straight after graduating high school. The young founders secured $1 million in seed funding and began building their NFT startup.

Although the founders do not reveal their overall sales, Shaamil claims their first Rajinikanth drop (which sold out) contributed to a 60 percent increase in sales for Diginoor. Read more

Startup Spotlight

Feeding farm cattle sustainably

Many animal-feed brands in India often manufacture adulterated animal feed to generate maximum profits.

This led Nikhil Bohra and his father Krishankant Bohra to start Krimanshi which manufactures nutritious climate-resilient animal feeds derived from upcycling of organic food waste and agri residues. Read more.

News & Updates

According to Hurun India Wealth Report 2021, the number of dollar-millionaire households in India has increased to 4,58,000, up by 11 percent from last year. Further, the net worth of these households was a minimum of Rs 7 crore.

Accelerator and early-stage fund for SaaS startups Upekkha said WestBridge Capital made a $9 million investment into UP Funds, the startup's SaaS-focussed rolling fund on AngelList USA.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a probe into Elon Musk and his brother's dealings in the aftermath of Tesla stock hitting an all-time high on November 4, 2021. This comes after Musk made a poll on Twitter on whether he should sell a portion of his shares.