Commerce Platform Wheelocity Raises $15 Mn in Funding Led by Lightspeed

Funding will speed up platform enlargement to serve India’s subsequent 800 million shoppers

Wheelocity at the moment introduced a $15 million funding spherical led by current investor Lightspeed, with participation from Alteria Capital, Anicut Capital and the corporate’s founder. This funding advances Wheelocity’s mission of bridging the commerce entry hole throughout India’s semi-urban and rural markets, the place over 800 million folks stay largely under-served by current commerce platforms.

The chance in India’s semi-urban and rural markets exceeds $1.1 trillion, pushed by the speedy digital adoption by rising smartphone penetration and improved web connectivity. Nonetheless, current commerce gamers have neglected these markets on account of three key challenges:

• Fragmented demand leading to excessive buyer acquisition and last-mile supply prices
• Complicated shopper preferences spanning a number of languages, classes, and types
• Restricted direct market attain, necessitating reliance on distributor and reseller networks

To handle these challenges in semi-urban India, Wheelocity has constructed a platform that delivers:

• Excessive frequency direct entry infrastructure, starting with important items (recent and grocery) as a basis for increasing into discretionary classes
• A hybrid offline-online mannequin designed for first-time customers of organized commerce.
• Price-effective service supply at scale by proprietary expertise and an progressive provide chain community

In simply 6 months, Wheelocity has established its presence in over 3,500 cities and villages, serving a million shoppers. The recent funding will energy the corporate’s enlargement to twenty,000 cities and villages over the subsequent 12 months, concentrating on a person base of 10 million shoppers. This progress might be supported by investments in Wheelocity’s proprietary expertise stack, direct attain community, and groups throughout class administration, operations, product, and engineering.

Selvam VMS, Founder and CEO of Wheelocity shared, “India’s progress story is incomplete with out the digital inclusion of our semi-urban and rural populations. It stays a really massive, worthwhile and but untapped alternative. This funding from Lightspeed and different companions validates our imaginative and prescient of constructing a commerce ecosystem particularly designed for these markets, considering their distinctive challenges and alternatives.”

“The following wave of India’s commerce progress will come from past the highest 200 cities“, stated Rahul Taneja, Accomplice at Lightspeed. “Wheelocity’s deep understanding of semi-urban markets, mixed with their technology-first method, positions them uniquely to seize this huge alternative. We’re excited to proceed to associate with them on this journey.”

Wheelocity is constructing India’s largest semi-urban commerce platform, combining the facility of expertise and deep provide chain innovation for the nation’s subsequent 800 million shoppers. Targeted on reworking entry and effectivity in semi-urban markets, Wheelocity is redefining commerce for India’s evolving shopper panorama past the highest 200 cities of India. By means of this journey, Wheelocity has created huge social influence by empowering semi-urban communities and offering earnings for 2000+ households. By electrifying 100,000+ kilometers of final mile operations, Wheelocity creates a long-lasting and optimistic influence on the surroundings as nicely. https://www.wheelocity.com/

About Lightspeed:

Lightspeed is a worldwide multi-stage enterprise capital agency targeted on accelerating disruptive improvements and tendencies within the Enterprise, Shopper, Well being, and Fintech sectors. Over the previous twenty years, the Lightspeed group has backed lots of of entrepreneurs and helped construct greater than 500 firms globally together with Affirm, Acceldata, Carta, Cato Networks, Darwinbox, Epic Video games, Faire, Innovaccer, Guardant Well being, Mulesoft, Navan, Netskope, Nutanix, Physics Wallah, Razorpay, Rubrik, Sharechat, Snap, OYO Rooms, Ultima Genomics, Zepto and extra. Lightspeed and its international group presently handle $25B in AUM throughout the Lightspeed platform, with funding professionals and advisors within the U.S., Europe, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia.