MaxWholesale, a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and supply chain platform, said on Tuesday it has raised $3 million (Rs 21.38 crore) in its Series A round of funding.
The funding round was co-led by IAN Fund, the eponymous debut fund of the Indian Angel Network (IAN), and Al Falaj Investment Co, an Abu Dhabi-based private family office focused on venture capital and private equity investments.
Existing investor Maple Capital also participated in the round, MaxWholesale said in a statement.
Abhinav Grover of Maple Capital; Ambarish Raghuvanshi, the former chief financial officer of Naukri.com parent Info Edge (India) Ltd; and Siddharth Bindra, managing director of women's ethnic wear brand Biba, among others, also put money in their individual capacity.
The New Delhi-based firm will use the funds to enhance its technology and accelerate growth.
Samarth Agrawal, CEO and founder at MaxWholesale, said the company also plans to rope in non-banking financial companies to provide credit and working capital loans to its kirana stores.
MaxWholesale, operated by 99 Algorithms Pvt. Ltd was co-founded in July 2016 by Agrawal and Rohit Narang. It helps kirana stores discover price and scheme on various FMCG brands and products and order the same for reselling through its e-commerce platform.
The platform, which currently services 10,000 kirana stores in Delhi, manages various warehouses in Delhi NCR with the delivery fleet of 60 vehicles in Delhi, Gurgram, Noida and Ghaziabad, it said.
In 2017, MaxWholesale raised $1 million in its pre-Series A funding round led by the Indian Angel Network and Maple Capital Advisors.
Deals in the B2B segment
There has been considerable investor interest in the B2B e-commerce segment, with startups catering to various domains as they seek to offer streamlined, efficient and organised procurement and supply chain services to businesses of all sizes.
In December last year, Tiger Global led a $20 million Series A funding round in Infra.Market, a marketplace for real estate and construction materials. and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round.
Few months before this, Udaan raised a whopping around $300 million (around Rs 2,166 crore) in its Series D funding round from investors including Altimeter Capital and Footpath Ventures.
In August last year, ShopKirana E-Trading Pvt. Ltd raised Rs 71.4 crore (around $10 million) in a funding round led by Info Edge.