CityMall, a social e-commerce startup that sells lifestyle and curated products via peer-to-peer referrals on WhatsApp, has raised $3 million in funding led by Elevation Capital, according to ET report.
Other investors that participated in the funding round include Waterbridge Ventures, and Arun Tadanki’s private syndicate on LetsVenture.
Founded in 2019 by Angad Kikla, Divij Goyal and Naisheel Verdhan, Citymall claims it has developed a community commerce platform for everyday products for the next 300 million Internet users.
The startup will use the fresh funding to expand its supply chain across the Tier III and IV cities in India, and build a core team.
“The next 300 million Internet users… have a fundamentally different behavior than the first 100 million users. They are native to social platforms like WhatsApp and prefer buying from someone they trust. For that reason, community-led ecommerce is unique as it solves two distinct problems – one creating a layer of trusted community leaders and secondly, disrupting two most significant cost elements of any ecommerce business – customer acquisition and logistics,” Angad Kikla, cofounder of CityMall, said.
“Apart from being vernacular, our app gamifies the journey of community leaders to help them grow their business on CityMall,” Naisheel Verdhan, cofounder of the startup, said.
–AN
HrNxt.com Newsdesk has researchers and writers with an excellent domain knowledge about the talent ecosystem, and the business environment. The team keeps a tab on the latest happenings in the ecosystem to bring most relevant news and insights for our readers. You can connect with our newsdesk at newsdesk@hrnxt.com.