Existing investors 9Unicorns, SOSV, Venture Catalysts and Astarc Ventures, as well as new investors will infuse $25 million (about Rs 185 crore) Series A money in Mumbai-based social commerce platform CoutLoot.
The fresh funds will be used for growth plans, CoutLoot co-founder Jasmeet Thind said.
Founded by Jasmeet Thind and Mahima Kaul in 2016, CoutLoot started as a fashion resale platform before pivoting to offline to online social commerce platform in 2019.
CoutLoot shares similarities with China’s Taobao competing with Facebook Marketplace and Instagram business pages, the company said.
It has over 120,000 active stores with more than 15 million listings, with top sellers coming from smaller Indian towns like Nagaon in Assam, Basai near Gurugram, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Surat in Gujarat, and Ludhiana in Punjab.
“India's non-MRP market is humongous and was hardly sold online, until now. We've not tried to reinvent the wheel but have brought local sellers from main markets of small cities and got them to sell to customers the same way they do it offline,” Thind said.
Thind added, “CoutLoot's business model attempts to fix the broken sales and supply chain in unbranded retail and sales in loose groceries.”
The firm says active sellers on average make up to Rs 8 Lakh a month, with average profits growing from Rs 3,000 in January 2020 to Rs 14,000 in July 2021.
CoutLoot offers features like bargaining, which is an integral part of hyperlocal shopping in India. The firm said buyers have received discounts as high as 43% from sellers.
The company provides its sellers with supply-chain support, payment support, and cataloguing based on artificial intelligence.
In 2016, it had received seed funding from Venture Catalysts.
