B2B marketplace Beldara will raise $7.4 million (Rs 55 crore) in its first external round of funding from Hindustan Media Ventures.
The startup has already received $4.2 million in its first tranche. It plans to utilise the capital towards accelerating brand awareness and boosting its new venture in agro-focused products under the Farm 2 Globe brand.
Beldara, launched by Pradeep Khandekar in 2018, is a B2B platform for wholesalers and manufacturers for buying and selling. It claims to have a catalogue of 30 product categories with a global user base.
“It (Beldara) enables retail traders to buy a wide range of quality products at best prices. At the same time, demand aggregation helps suppliers in improving productivity and therefore operating margin,” said Anirudh Singhal, strategic investment head of Hindustan Media Ventures.
Mumbai-listed Hindustan Media Ventures is 74.4% owned by HT Media Ltd, the operator of newspaper brands such as Hindustan Times, according to stock-exchange data. In July last year, HT Media acquired Mosaic Media Ventures Pvt Ltd, the operator of VCCircle.com, from News Corp.
Hindustan Media Ventures has made several investments in the recent past including those in SoftBank-backed hospitality chain Oyo, virtual workspace provider Wurkr and fintech platform MobiKwik.
