Udaan looks to secure ₹4k crore to fund growth

Udaan is likely to close the funding round in the next few weeks, the people cited above said, requesting anonymity.

B2B marketplace Udaan is set to raise as much as ₹4,000 crore to fund expansion as more retailers and wholesalers embrace digital commerce, two people directly aware of the plan said.

The fundraising will value the startup at $4.5-5 billion. (Shutterstock)

Udaan is likely to close the funding round in the next few weeks, the people cited above said, requesting anonymity.

The fundraising will value the startup at $4.5-5 billion, one of the two people said. “There is an unprecedented demand to add capacity as customers are migrating to e-commerce platforms,” the person said. This will be the largest fundraising by the five-year-old Udaan, which has hired Goldman Sachs to manage the process, the person said.

Udaan currently has more than 3 million retailers and 25,000 sellers on its platform, and plans to “double sales volume within a year” by tying up with more sellers, expanding its logistics network and employing technology to grow its business in the pharmaceutical and packaged consumer goods space that has seen a surge in demand.

Experts said digitization of the retail and wholesale supply chains is likely to outlast the crisis and trigger faster expansion of both customer and business-centric e-commerce platforms.