Tiger Global leads $110 mn round in Bizongo at $600 mn valuation

By Ankit Agarwal

  • 06 Dec 2021
Credit: VCCircle

SmartPaddle Technology Pvt. Ltd., which owns and operates a business-to-business platform for packaging materials Bizongo, has raised Rs 825 crore ($110 million) in its Series D round of funding, led by New York-based Tiger Global Management, according to regulatory filings filed by the company.

The funds are being raised at a post-money valuation of Rs 4,500 crore ($600 million), an analysis of the filings by VCircle show.

The company issued 10 equity shares and 1,21,510 series D2 compulsorily convertible preference shares (D2CCPS) at Rs 67,890 apiece to 10 subscribers, the filings reveal.

While Tiger Global’s Internet Fund VII subscribed to 49,713 D2CCPS for Rs 337.5 crore, existing investors B Capital, CDC Group and World Bank’s IFC invested Rs 131.25 crore, Rs 131.25 crore and Rs 118.23 crore respectively, the regulatory filings show.

The equity shares were subscribed by CDC Group. Other investors in the round included Schroder, Chiratae Ventures, Adveq, Bruno E. Raschle, Add Ventures Capital, Castle Investment, and Satyadharma Investments. The board of directors of the company had approved the issuance of securities on November 25, 2021.

VCCircle was the first to disclose last month that the company was in talks to raise funds from marquee investors.

In April, the company closed its series C round of funding involving a mix of both equity and debt worth $51 million led by CDC Group.

CDC Group had first joined the company’s cap table in January this year.

The company has raised round $187 million to date.

Bizongo was founded in 2015 by Sachin Agarwal, Aniket Deb and Ankit Tomar. The company offers boxes, containers, pouches and bags for industries such as food and hospitality, consumer goods and retail. It has warehouses in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. Its clients include BigBasket, Nykaa, Swiggy, Delhivery, Teabox and Tata Cliq.

It is among a growing number of B2B startups that have attracted investor interest as they seek to offer streamlined, efficient and organized procurement and supply chain services to businesses of all sizes. It designs, develops and sells packaging material to small and medium enterprises, faced headwinds due to the Covid-19 pandemic and laid off employees in July 2020, but claimed it paid severance packages to those employees.
 
According to the company’s provisional income statement for the year ended March 2021, its operating revenues have grown by more than a third to Rs 333.93 crore from Rs 247.52 crore in FY20. Its losses have shrunk from Rs 134.56 crore in FY20 to Rs 74 crore during FY21. The company’s employee benefit expense has reduced by a third from Rs 82 crore in FY20 to Rs 54.6 crore in FY21.