India’s unicorn startup club has been inducting new members to its ranks at an unprecedented rate over the past couple of years. Recently, unicorns, private startups valued at US$1 billion or more, have been emerging into the market through their respective investment rounds, with investor support.

The latest enterprise to join the coveted unicorn club is Udaan, an Indian network-centric business-to-business (B2B) trade platform, after it raised over $585 million in a Series D investment round, one of the year’s biggest late-stage rounds, valuing the Bangalore-based startup at approximately $2.8 billion.

The investment round was led by Tencent, Hillhouse Capital, Citi Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Footpath Ventures and GGV Capital with participation from existing investors; DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

According to reports, the company plans to utilize the newly raised funds to further consolidate and deepen its business presence throughout India and also integrate new product categories across its product portfolio.

Udaan co-founder, Vaibhav Gupta stated that the company would continue to focus on expanding its marketplace; integrating more sellers and attracting more buyers to the platform, introducing more categories to the catalog and investing on enhancing capabilities in delivery, fulfilment, marketing, lending, core technology and category management.

In 2018, the company raised over $225 million in a round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners as well as DST Global, making Udaan one of the fastest companies to attain a Unicorn status.

Today, the startup is estimated to rake in approximately $2 billion in yearly gross merchandise value. Udaan also completed over five million product orders last month.

After it received its NBFC license, the startup began lending in November on its platform, particularly on the premise that small-scale grocery stores have been restricted and relegated to their local wholesale market landscapes because of their inability at getting credit from somewhere else.

The President of Tencent, Martin Lau stated that Udaan is a powerful example of the way technologies can help small-scale businesses and empower merchants while simultaneously bringing benefits to end-customers and improving the efficiencies across industries.

B2B e-commerce companies have been receiving strong investor interest over the past couple of months. Recently, Ninjacart, India's biggest business-to-business fresh produce supply chain firm, received a $89.5 million investment from Tiger Global.

Source credit: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/udaan-valuation-soars-to-2-8-billion-post-585-mn-funding/articleshow/71416118.cms