Social commerce platform DealShare recently raised $165 million in its Series E round of funding, pushing its valuation up to $1.6 billion. This marked the company’s entry into the coveted unicorn club.
Speaking about achieving the unicorn status, Vineet Rao, Founder and CEO, DealShare tells YS that as the company started only a few years ago in Jaipur, a Tier-II city, for the first year or so, they were in that city incubating their model.
The company has been expanding aggressively since last year. “In the last year alone, we grew almost 13 times as compared to the year before and now, we are present in over 130 cities and towns across 10 states,” he says.
Dealshare Founding team
He explains that this particular round of funding will enable the company to invest in its supply chain, technology, and as well as continue with its expansion.
Vineet mentions that DealShare is now moving from being an early-stage startup to gaining maturity, and the first step in that direction would be to put together a strong team for continued growth. The company has already set up a good leadership team with big leaders from the industry. Additionally, the company also intends on investing heavily into its supply chain and technology in the consumer domain, while continuing its expansion journey.
“Our expansion model is also densification-based,” he says.
While talking about expansion plans, Vineet says that they are currently in 10 states, with five of them added recently in the last six months. The company plans to get that number up to 20 by the end of this year.
He adds that DealShare is also investing heavily into creating an offline store network. “We do want our consumers, whether they are purchasing online or going to a kirana store, to get good quality products at lower prices,” he says.
Vineet shares that the company is clocking about $700 million in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) run rate this year, and by the end of 2022, they wish to cross $3 billion in annualised GMV run rate. “We also expect that sometime this year or by the end of this year, we will be very close to operational profitability,” he says.
Lastly, in terms of acquisitions, he mentions that the company is working on acquisitions on the supply side and are building plans to acquire some good brands. “We will be looking at technology and supply chain companies to acquire,” he says.
