ShopClues, an India-based online marketplace backed by e-commerce company Beenos, is in the process of raising between $100m and $150m for its series E round, DealStreetAsia reported yesterday.
ShopClues expects to secure the money within the current financial year, the company’s CEO and co-founder Sanjay Sethi revealed. It aims to spend approximately $50m on investments in, or acquihires of up to eight startups.
The company intends to invest in companies operating in the hyperlocal, adtech and digital payment processing sectors, and has reserved between $20m and $25m from previous rounds to that end.
Founded in 2011, ShopClues operates an online platform that connects customers with third-party retailers. It has about 300,000 businesses selling some 35 million products on its service, and claims to get more than 100 million monthly visitors to its website.
ShopClues is looking to expand its offering to include hyperlocal deliveries by January 2016, and to launch its own digital wallet by backing and partnering payments services providers.
The company provided an undisclosed amount in seed funding for India-based hyperlocal marketplace HeyBiz earlier this month.
ShopClues secured $100m in a January 2015 series D round led by Tiger Global, with participation from Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners. It is thought to have raised between $15m and $20m in series C capital from Nexus and Helion in early 2014, but has not disclosed details.
Beenos, then known as Netprice, took part in Shopclues’ $10m series B round in 2013 alongside Helion, which led the round, and Nexus. An unnamed VC fund invested $4m in the company’s series A round in 2012, which followed $2m in angel funding from US-based individuals in 2011.
ShopClues was initially bootstrapped with a $250,000 investment from Sethi.