Uttar Pradesh-based online gifting company IGP.com has raised an undisclosed sum in its pre-Series A round from funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts, a company statement said.
A number of angels including Sarvesh Goel, Abhijeet Birewar, Amit Dhanki, and others participated in the round, the statement added.
IGP.com will use the funds to enhance its supply chain infrastructure and for branding, the company said.
IGP.com last raised funds in October 2016, when it secured $2 million from the family office of Naveen Arya, one of the three promoters of Karamchand Appliances, and Tarun Joshi, the India director of UK-based private equity firm 3i.
In a management rejig in January this year, the firm’s majority investor Joshi took over as executive chairman to spearhead the firm’s international expansion.
Run by Intermesh Shopping Network Pvt. Ltd, IGP.com was previously a unit of IndiaMART, an online B2B platform for small- and medium-sized businesses. In 2012, Joshi bought out the entity. He roped in Rahul Garg as chief executive in January 2015, when the company acqui-hired Garg’s online handicraft venture ArtisanGilt.com.
Garg left the firm in May 2017 and is currently with venture capital firm Kalaari Capital.
IGP.com offers gifts in six key categories including festival merchandise, flowers, gourmet, jewellery, toys and handicrafts among others. The company currently has offices in Mumbai, Lucknow, Noida, Jaipur, and California.
The company recommends gifts to customers and also delivers packaged gifts from its warehouses. It delivers across 200 cities in India and over 100 countries around the world. It has partnered with Interflora, a floral gifting company.
“IGP.com has created a world-class technology product and strong supply chain to enable its customers to effortlessly send gifts around the world. We are very excited to have Venture Catalysts as our investor and partner in this journey and look forward to the mentorship they can provide us to unlock further possibilities in this promising domain,†Joshi said.
Mumbai-based Venture Catalysts typically invests between $100,000 and $500,000 in early-stage startups. It currently operates in seven cities—Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Lucknow, Raipur and Surat. The investment platform was founded by Dr Apoorv Sharma, Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, and Gaurav Jain in December 2015. In July last year, it raised $500,000 (around Rs 3.4 crore then) from Zaffiro Ventures.
Venture Catalysts' recent investments include specialised cuisine startup, The Bohri Kitchen, identity management platform ERA, energy drinks startup FYRE, and fin-tech startup HomeCapital.