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Delhi-headquartered rural commerce startup Rozana.in has raised $22.5 million led by Bertelsmann India Investments (BII). Fireside Ventures and returning investors also participated in the round.

The company will utilise the funds to expand warehousing and logistics into new districts and enhance its technology platform, apart from hiring for technology, product and operations teams. 

The company will also work closely with Binny Bansal led startup scaling platform xto10x Technologies for warehouse design, last-mile delivery, launching new categories and expansion plans, the company said in a statement.

This takes the total amount of funding raised by Rozana to $26.5 million across multiple rounds. The company had last raised $2.5 million in a pre-Series A round of funding in 2022 led by 3One4 Capital and mid-market focused global boutique investment bank IEG, among other angel investors.

Founded in 2021 by Ankur Dahiya, Adwait Vikram Singh, Mukesh Christopher and Prithvi Pal Singh, Rozana offers a selection of over 5,000 products to rural consumers through its ecommerce platform across 12,000 villages in 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.  

“Rural India represents a massive and underserved ecommerce opportunity consisting of nearly a billion people,” said Ankur Dahiya, Co-founder and CEO of Rozana in a statement issued by the company. “With this funding, we will continue building out our logistics and supply chain infrastructure to reach new districts and empower rural communities with access to essential products.”

Rozana works with a network of 18,000 hyperlocal ‘peer partners’ at the village-level as last mile delivery partners. The delivery partners, 90% of whom are women,  consolidate orders to make deliveries within their local communities as large as 30 to 40 households. 

“The opportunity in rural India is greatly underappreciated and this team is the ideal one to unlock it. The offering created by Ankur, Adwait and Mukesh is outstanding and it is hard to find a company with such consumer love,” said Rohit Sood, Partner at Bertelsmann India Investments in the statement. 

He further added, “The possibility to create meaningful impact in millions of lives excites us and we are thrilled to partner with Rozana on this journey.”

Rozana competes in the rural ecommerce space with the likes of InMobi backed Shop101, social commerce startup CityMall, and others.