Microsoft invests USD 200 m in B2B e-commerce unicorn Udaan

By siliconindia  |  Tuesday, 14 June 2022, 09:14:56 AM IST

Microsoft invests USD 200 m in B2B e-commerce unicorn Udaan
Microsoft Corp invested USD200 million in the business-to-business e-commerce unicorn Udaan for its debt financing round through convertible notes.
The Bengaluru-based company raised a total of USD225 million through convertible notes. The securities issued
will be converted into equity in Udaan’s next round of funding or during its planned IPO.
JSA advised Microsoft with Lalit Kumar, Bharti Joshi and Vaibhav Choukse as the partners; Amandeep Singh Virk and Ela Bali as principal associates; Zarish Ali, associate, and Pallavi Mall as junior associate.
Udaan’s platform enables supply chain and logistics operations focused on B2B trade for daily deliveries spanning more than 900 cities through udaanExpress. It enables small businesses, manufacturers and retailers access to financial products and services through udaanCapital to grow their businesses.
Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar and Vaibhav Gupta co-founded Udaan after quitting their jobs at Flipkart.
The platform allows transparency, accessibility, affordability and national reach to 15 million manufacturers, 25 to 30 million retailers, 10 to 12 million institutional businesses such as offices, schools, and HoReCa that account for over 60 million MSMEs in India.
Founded in 2016, Udaan is India’s largest B2B e-commerce platform. It competes with Amazon India, Flipkart, Reliance’s JioMart and the Tata Group for a share in the grocery market, which is estimated to be worth USD850 billion by 2025.
Udaan has its operations across categories including lifestyle, electronics, home and kitchen, staples, fruit and vegetables, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmaceuticals, toys and general merchandise.
To cater to the growing demand, Udaan plans to scale its warehouse capacity to 50 million square feet across the country in the next seven to eight years.
Source: IANS

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