Gurgaon-headquartered online marketplace ShopClues has raised Rs. 50 crores in venture debt from InnoVen Capital, according to the reports of Livemint. This is a rare instance where a homegrown unicorn had opted for venture debt.
ShopClues recently stated that it would do a pre-IPO round, between $ 50 million and $ 100 million in 2017. Generally, a venture debt is raised for working capital, when the company is facing a shortage of funds, but the reports have quoted CEO Sanjay Sethi saying the debt is preferred as it can be paid off whereas equity will lead to dilution.
InnoVen Capital includes OYO Rooms, Myntra, Practo, BlueStone and Furlenco in its portfolio.
Founded by Sanjay Sethi, Radhika Aggarwal and her husband Sandeep Aggarwal in 2011, ShopClues from the beginning has been focusing on expanding tier II as well as tier III cities in the country.
Shopclues, backed by Helion Venture Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, GIC and Tiger Global Management, joined the unicorn club in January last year with a valuation of $1.1 billion.
This online platform had been focusing on fashion and lifestyle categories, and now is venturing into local and unbranded markets as well. ShopClues also claims that it had improved its NPS (Net Promoter Sector) by over 30 points in just a year.
Sanjay Sethi opened about this recent developments, said: “Today, to seriously go after the unstructured categories and Bharat consumer and to build a business that will scale to make money, it has to be done very differently from how Amazon and Flipkart are doing now. That has to be done under a different brand.”