BENGALURU: Mobile commerce app Goodbox today said it will be raising more than 16.5 crore ($2.5 million) in a little over two months in the next round after seeing a great traction due to sharp increase in mini apps signed in by merchants in just 75 days after "Do-It-Yourself" feature was added. 

The next round of funds will be utilised to invest in technology and expansion across India, Goodbox Co-Founder and CEO Abey Zachariah told PTI here.

He said the DIY feature has helped Goodbox to add another 8,000 mini apps in their mega app (Goodbox). 

"We added another 8,000 mini apps in our mega app in just two-and-half months. We right now boast of 13,000 mini apps on our platform," he said. 

DIY is a feature which helps businesses create their own commerce-ready apps on Goodbox platform without much hassles. 

Apps are expensive to make and manage, besides involves high marketing costs. 

At present, Goodbox is operational in Bengaluru with 13,000 merchants signed up, including supermarkets, restaurants, laundry chains, rental providers and the like, Zachariah said. 

"Goodbox aims to add one lakh mini apps on its platform by the end of this year," he added. 

Goodbox had raised nearly 16.5 crore from Nexus Venture Partners in November, 2015, Zachariah said. 

The company had earlier raised seed-funding from the Manipal Group, Aprameya Radhakrishna (co-founder TaxiForSure) and Charan Padmaraju (co-founder redBus). 

Zachariah said "mini apps are apps within a mega app. So a consumer just has to download the mega app and gets access to 1000s of Mini Apps through the mega app." 

"Consumers prefer to download one app from which they can buy from and interact with multiple businesses. These apps are rarely deleted because they have 1000s of businesses on one platform." 

"They can search for the name of a business, find their Mini App and just click on + to add that business' Mini App to their home screen. Adding a Mini App to your home screen takes less than 10 mili seconds," he added.

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