Dukaan, which recently sent a legal notice to Sequoia Capital-backed Khatabook for plagiarism, has attracted $6 million (around Rs 45 crore) in a seed funding round from a clutch of institutional and individual investors.
The funding round was led by Lightspeed India and Matrix Partners India, Dukaan co-founder Suumit Shah confirmed to VCCircle. The venture capital firms pumped in Rs 18.6 crore each in Dukaan.
Sprout Investments, Weekend Fund, Appyhigh and Venture Catalysts also participated in this funding round.
Angel investors including Haresh Chawla, former CEO at Network18; and Kunal Shah, the founder of FreeCharge and Cred; also pooled in capital. Notably, Kunal Shah has also invested in Khatabook.
Shah also told VCCircle that the fresh capital will be used to enhance Dukaan’s product and expand operations.
He said that over 2.7 million merchants have digitized their businesses using the Dukaan app so far. He added that its power stores were able to generate over 6 lakh orders in the last three months, resulting in total gross merchandise value of over Rs 100 crore.
News website Entrackr first reported the fundraise citing regulatory filings.
Dukaan, operated by Growthpond Technology Pvt. Ltd, was launched by Shah, Subhash Choudhary, Anurag Meena and Kaustub Pandey this year. Shah, Choudhary and Pandey are also co-founders of Rankz.io, which helps enterprises in scaling their organic traffic and content distribution, according to their LinkedIn profiles.
In August, Dukaan had sent a legal notice to Khatabook Inc. for allegedly copying its logo and interface for a new service.
Shah said the legal tussle with Khatabook is a “small issue” and its legal team is working to resolve it.
Khatabook, which operates an eponymous small- and medium-enterprise-focussed financial technology firm, is backed by marquee investors including Sequoia, Tencent, RTP Global and GGV Capital. In May, it raised $60 million in a Series B funding round led by B Capital, which was set up by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin.
A bunch of other fintech startups have also raised early- and growth-stage funding during the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier this week, Razorpay raised $100 million in a new funding round that catapulted the online payment gateway provider to the famed unicorn group of startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion.
Last week, Uni, a fintech startup in stealth mode co-founded by former PayU India CEO Nitin Gupta, raised $18.5 million in its seed funding round led by Lightspeed and Accel.
Smallcase Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a capital markets-focussed financial technology startup, secured $14 million in a Series B round in September. Last month, Vulcan Capital led seed funding in fintech startup Qapita.
In August, FPL Technologies Pvt. Ltd, founded by three former ICICI Bank executives last year, raised $10 million from new and existing investors in its Series A funding round.
*This article has been updated to include comments from Dukaan's co-founder.
