New Delhi, Jan 5 (IANS): Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce platform Udaan has raised $250 million, as it prepares to accelerate and strengthen capabilities to serve its customers better.
In an internal email to employees seen by IANS, chief financial officer Aditya Pande said that the start-up has raised $200 million in convertible note and $50 million in debt.
"We are glad to share that we have 5 new marquee investors coming onboard the Udaan juggernaut, as part of our recently concluded convertible note financing. This round was oversubscribed 2x and also saw participation from our existing investors, including those who bought into the company through the secondary (ESOP) round in H1 2021," Pande wrote.
Udaan has invested more than Rs 4,000 crore in the past 12-18 months across different pillars of business.
Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Bengaluru, it currently has a network of over three million registered users and 25-30,000 sellers across more than 900 cities in the country.
In the calendar year 2021, Udaan raised $500 million, taking its total raise to $1.4 billion to date.
A convertible note is an instrument typically used by companies at pre-IPO stage, and the instrument converts into equity at the IPO.
Large-scale tech companies that have successfully used convertible notes include Airbnb, Uber, Spotify and Robinhood.
"With this convertible offering, we, as a company, have started building a complete new muscle in our finance function - which we will continue to strengthen as we go forward," said Pande.
Udaan saw over 95 per cent growth (on-year) for its food and FMCG business in October last year.
Fuelled by the 'Mega Bharat Sale' for kirana shops and small retailers across the country, the FMCG business witnessed a growth (on-year) of over 115 per cent with major demands coming from small-town India, the company said in a statement.
To cater to the growing demand, Udaan plans to scale its warehouse capacity to 50 million square feet across the country in the next seven-eight years.