Bengaluru-based live commerce platform Peepul Tree on Wednesday said it has secured seed funding of $6 million (around Rs 49 crore) from venture capital firm Elevar Equity.
The fresh funds will be deployed for product marketing, onboarding content creators and scaling up tech portfolio.
Founded by Anish Williams, Mini Menon and Priya Jayaraman last year, Peepul Tree works with local artisans and content creators by aggregating supply through a cluster-based approach and managing the supply chain and logistics to consumers by way of their tech platform. Currently, it has 24 artisan clusters from which they are sourcing their products.
The company aims to support 100,000 artisans and 500 crafts and onboard 1,000 content creators on its platform by the end of 2023.
“We are committed to providing access to a global marketplace and a credible platform to artisans that have been at the helm of safeguarding centuries-old traditions and sustainable processes whilst ensuring the consumers discover and take back a conscious retail experience of a lifetime,” said Williams.
“This investment in Peepul Tree is in line with our other recent investments, and an opportunity to impact the livelihoods of millions of rural households,” said Jyotsna Krishnan, managing partner, Elevar Equity.
In January last year, Elevar Equity was a part of the $35 million Series C round of Maharashtra-based lender SarvaGram Fincare Pvt. Ltd, which caters to the credit requirements of rural households. It also led $ 6.1 million Series A funding round of Odisha-based Healthtech platform CureBay in November 2022.
In May 2021, VCCircle reported that Elevar Equity hit the road to secure commitments for its fifth India-focused fund that sought to raise $120-125 million (Rs 883-920 crore).
