The company will use the money for product enhancement, team expansion and marketing initiatives. Photo: Mint
New Delhi: BigFoot Retail Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates e-commerce-enabling solutions provider KartRocket, on Monday said it had raised $6 million in an investment round led by Bertelsmann India Investments, the strategic investment arm of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann SE & Co.
Existing investors Nirvana Digital India Fund, Nirvana Digital Investment Holding Co. Ltd, US-based 500 Startups and Singapore-based Beenext also participated in the round.
The company will use the money for product enhancement, team expansion and marketing initiatives.
Big Foot Retail raised around $2 million in its first round of funding led by Nirvana Venture with participation by 500 Startups and Japan-based Beenos Inc. in October 2015.
New Delhi-based KartRocket caters to the small and medium enterprises market in India by enabling merchants to go online under their own brand.
It provides companies web and mobile-phone sites, payments and logistics capabilities and marketing and promotion tools.
To strengthen its offering in the seller ecosystem, in September it also launched a mobile-first online-to-offline marketplace, Kraftly, that targets small sellers, individuals and home-based entrepreneurs in India in product categories such as apparel and accessories.
“The current eco-system is not supportive of integrating smaller sellers into e-commerce, in fact they aim towards replacing them rather than including them. Kraftly has a single vision of allowing every seller to participate in e-commerce. There are over 50 million homepreneurs (entrepreneurs working out of home) and small sellers in India that currently do not have a medium of launching their sales online. By bringing such sellers online we’re building the largest supply base of unique products for buyers to choose from,” said Saahil Goel, chief executive officer and co-founder of KartRocket.
Kraftly has over 7,500 shops and claims to be adding over 10,000 listings per day.
“By giving the power of e-commerce back in the hands of the small seller, Kraftly has the potential to create an entire new e-commerce ecosystem currently lacking in the Indian market. The recent growth in offline to online commerce in countries such as China, Singapore, US and Japan is further validation of this business opportunity,” said Pankaj Makkar, managing director of Bertelsmann India Investments.
[“source-Livemint”]