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New Delhi: Indiamart.com, one of the largest online listing platforms for small and medium businesses has raised an undisclosed amount in Series C funding led by Amadeus Capital, a top company executive said Wednesday.
Westbridge, UK based Quona Capital and existing investor Intel Capital too participated in the round, said Dinesh Agarwal, founder and chief executive at IndiaMart.
Indiamart, which has raised close to Rs.65 crore since inception in 1996, will use the funds largely for Tolexo, its new online marketplace for businesses.
The current round is expected to have raised Rs.130-140 crore, said two people familiar with the discussion, who did not want to be identified.
The company will also use the funds towards financing small and medium enterprises and payments space, said Agarwal. “This will largely be done through third party tie-ups to start with; we could lend smaller amounts on our own too by creating escrow accounts,” said Agarwal.
The company, which has been largely focusing around small and medium businesses, is now expanding its reach to large businesses as well. “We have started to think that at this scale, we are useful for large companies and suppliers. It is prudent for the business to focus on both small and large businesses and some part of the funds will go towards this segment as well.” The company has already started working with large suppliers such as Godrej Interio, consumer electronics firm BenQ and other large component makers.
Indiamart started out as an online directory for businesses in India. It is currently backed by Intel Capital with Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd as one of its investors. It launched Tolexo, an online retail marketplace for consumers and businesses to shop on the web, in June 2014.
Tolexo currently lists a million products and has about 7,000-plus sellers on its platform. The company in 13 months of operations had more than 200,000 customers, who transacted on its website. It claims to be registering a double digit growth.
Indiamart is expecting this to be its last round before an initial public offering. “I hope this is our last round before going public. We have got systems and processes in place…,” said Agarwal.
Getting Westbridge on board is part of Agarwal’s strategy to prepare the company for a public listing. Westbridge backs publicly traded firms Infoedge and Justdial. Agarwal had announced his IPO plans in 2014, saying the company was preparing for an overseas IPO in 2015. However, a weak market has pushed the company’s plans to list.
Indiamart, which had revenues of Rs.215 crore for the year ending March 2015, is likely to close this year with sales hitting north of Rs.300 crore. The company claims to be cash-positive for over two years now.
The company offers a platform and tools to over 1.4 crore buyers to search from over 2.57 crore products and get connected with over 18 lakh suppliers. It currently has over 3000 employees located across 55 plus offices in the country.