ElasticRun, an India and Southeast Asia-focused e-commerce logistics startup, announced raising $75 million in its Series D funding round led by existing investors Avataar Ventures and Prosus Ventures.
Existing investor Kalaari Capital also participated in the funding round that takes the total funding raised by ElasticRun to date to about $132 million. In 2019, the firm raised $40 million in its Series C round led by Prosus and Avataar.
The startup, founded by Sandeep Deshmukh, Saurabh Nigam, and Shitiz Bansal in 2016, leverages the network of small convenience stores by enabling the store owners to gain increased revenue by handling last-mile deliveries.
ElasticRun said it partners with some of the biggest e-commerce companies, including Flipkart and Amazon, to utilise owners of small stores to make deliveries to customers.
It has been helping e-commerce companies reach customers in far-flung areas through its network of rural Kirana stores.
The startup operates in more than 300 cities in India and works with over 125,000 neighborhood stores. Bansal told TechCrunch in an interview that it plans to expand to reach 1 million partners in 18 to 24 months.
Avatar Ventures, the co-anchor in the funding round, invests in tech-enabled B2B marketplaces and SaaS companies in the growth stage. The venture firm raised an additional $100 million in February for its Opportunities Fund.
Prosus Ventures, on the other hand, is a unit of Amsterdam-listed internet company Prosus, which in turn is controlled by Naspers, the influential South African company that owns media empire Media24.
The fundraise comes as Indian startups raked in at least $2.8 billion across 93 venture capital and private equity transactions in March this year, despite the unprecedented challenges thrown by the country’s second COVID-19 wave.
The fundraising was a sharp 72% jump from the same month last year, according to proprietary data compiled by DealStreetAsia. Compared with February 2021, deal value in March — based on the 75 disclosed transactions— was up about 83%.
