Venture capital firm Sequoia India is likely to pump in around $15 million (₹100 crore) in Delhi-based online-to-offline player Nearbuy.
Nearbuy was formerly known as Groupon India, a subsidiary of Chicago-based product deals and discounts site Groupon.
However, in early 2015, Sequoia India invested about $20 million in it and helped it break away from its American parent.
As part of the deal, Sequoia bought a majority stake in the Indian firm and re-branded it as Nearbuy and also pivoted the company to a local services discovery site with the launch of a new website, mobile app and corporate logo.
Both Sequoia and Nearbuy declined to comment on the fund-raising.
However, Ankur Warikoo, founder and CEO of Nearbuy, told BusinessLine that the company has witnessed a “tremendous” growth post the re-brand and pivot.
“In the past one-and-a-half years, our top-line has increased five times and we have doubled our merchant base by expanding our reach from nine cities in 2015 to 33 at present. We are also ahead of Amazon as the highest-rated e-commerce app on Google Play Store.”
Talking about the opportunity in the discovery of local services in India, Warikoo said the services market in India at present is at $76 billion, including services across food, beauty, entertainment and travel, and only about 0.1 per cent of the transactions happen online.
“This current market has the potential to reach $126 billion in the next five years, and it would reach about 4 per cent online then. There is a big opportunity here. We are quite optimistic about the way the consumption pattern is changing. Currently, about 68 per cent of all our transactions are bought and consumed within four hours,” he added.
Warikoo added that while bigger cities and metros are faring well, smaller towns are not, as there aren’t enough merchants. Roping in traditional eateries and local shops is slightly challenging at present, but Warikoo is hopeful that things will change in the next one year.
Nearbuy is also looking to launch two new initiatives in the next couple of months, but Warikoo did not divulge those details due to competitive reasons.
Paytm-backed Little is its nearest and closest competitor.
Warikoo said that the re-branding has worked well. Since the portal does not deal with any physical products, it helps the company keep its costs low on logistics and customer acquisition, he said.