ShopClues raises 54 cr from Helion, NVP

Online marketplace start-up, ShopClues.com, has raised its third round of funding of Rs 54 crores ($9.97 m) from Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners (NVP). NVP had previously led the Series A investment in the company in Feb 2012.  With this round, ShopClues.com has raised over $15 million in capital so far. Sanjeev Aggarwal from Helion will join the board along with Anup Gupta from NVP who has been the member since last year.

“We believe that the time is ripe for small business to jump onto the online retail bandwagon, given the deep entrenchment of online shopping among Indian consumers. In fact, smaller business may lose their share of the marketplace if they do not have an online strategy in place. This is why ShopClues.com is relevant, and the platform has already proved invaluable to numerous merchants. On the consumer front, ShopClues.com offers a great comparison engine, a vital shopping tool. Moreover, the growth that we’ve seen in this company is proof of its leadership and vision,” said Sanjeev Aggarwal, Senior Managing Director, Helion Advisors.

“Even as online retail comes of age in India with over 10 million users, there are several small and medium businesses (SMBs) in the country that struggle to garner a toe-hold in this growing marketplace. This is exactly what ShopClues.com wants to address. At least a third of the 30 million SMBs will benefit from the visibility and marketplace that we offer, albeit at lower transactional costs than doing it alone, all by themselves,” said Sandeep Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of ShopClues.com.

“We have been very impressed with ShopClues.com’s differentiated approach to e-commerce that is highly scalable and capital efficient. Sandeep Aggarwal (Founder, ShopClues.com) and the team have single minded focus on execution and are solving fundamental issues for e-commerce by bringing India centric innovations based on their global learning,” said Anup Gupta, Managing Director, Nexus Venture Partners.

Started in November 2011, the gross revenue transacted on the Gurgaon-based start-up is up nearly 110 times from February 2012 to February 2013.