JSW Group’s business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce arm, JSW One Platforms, has raised Rs 205 crore (around $25 million) in a Series A funding round from Japan’s Mitsui & Co. at a valuation of more than Rs 2,705 crore ($330 million).
JSW One Platforms will utilise the funds to strengthen its market presence and further enhance tech capabilities, the company said in a release. It also plans to expand operations in newer geographies like the national capital region (NCR), Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh to cater to most of the states in India. It will also invest in credit, logistics, and technology stack to improve customer experience.
“Mitsui’s investment will help us penetrate deeper into the industrial and construction industries. We also look forward to bringing other industry segments onto the platform and will continue to leverage technology to be an industry-leading platform for MSMEs,” said Gaurav Sachdeva, chief executive officer of JSW One Platforms.
JSW One Platforms launched its e-commerce platform jswonemsme.com in January 2021. The platform caters to manufacturing and construction industries, basically servicing the building material needs of industrial and construction MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) in India. It primarily deals in steel, cement, and paints.
It leverages the $22 billion-worth JSW Group’s strength in manufacturing and building materials, tech-enabled logistics and credit offerings. The conglomerate is investing around Rs 4,000 crore to build the ecommerce platform.
Mitsui’s investment in JSW One Platforms validates the company’s long-term strategic vision to capitalise on technology to take a strong leadership position in the B2B e-commerce sector, said JSW One Platforms’ director Parth Jindal.
“India has over 500,000 building and manufacturing MSME’s and as this number grows JSW One aims to cater to all their building materials requirements through its products,” he added.
In addition to the e-commerce platform, company operates a turn-key home construction business called JSW One Homes. It offers services such as home design, architecture, engineering, and more.
“Our investment and partnership with JSW One Platforms not only signal our conviction in the long-term growth prospects of the B2B e-commerce space, which was catalysed by the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Masaharu Okubo, managing officer, country chairperson in India of Mitsui & Co.
Gurugram-based coworking aggregator platform Stylework has raised $2 million (around Rs 16.3 crore) as a part of its Series A1 funding round that valued the company at $20 million.
The round saw participation from a host of institutional investors including Capri Global Holdings and QI Ventures among others, with undisclosed family offices. Existing backers We Founder Circle, India Accelerator’s angel investors’ network iAngels, Sateeq Invest and some high net-worth individuals (HNIs) also took part in the fundraise.
Founded by Sparsh Khandelwal, Stylework offers flexible coworking space in over 80 cities across the country. The company claims to have over 250 business-to-business (B2B) corporates and 300 startups as client portfolio.
“There is no doubt that the co-working spaces' membership architectures still need lots of bundling work. To scale it and significantly impact the coworking industry, it needs our focused product's attention to detail and deep integrations,” said Khandelwal.
He added that the fresh infusion will help the platform to further grow its advanced flexible workspace aggregator technology and product for corporates.
“With the rise of hybrid flexible work mode, there is a huge demand for flexible and managed workspace solutions and Stylework has the potential to revolutionize the way companies will formulate their flex workspace strategies,” said Neeraj Tyagi, co-founder and chief executive at We Founder Circle.
