LocalBanya.com expands to Pune, funding from Shrem Strategies
Mumbai based e-grocery Localbanya.com now serves Pune along side Mumbai, the company has announced. It received a new round of funding from Shrem Strategies towards the end of 2014. After doing test runs in Pune in February (including same-day delivery), they decided to become operational in Pune towards the end of February this year. The 3 year old company is looking to expand to metros in the next 3 months. It claims to have over 1 lakh customers and 14,000 products on the website, delivering up to 11:30pm. It adds that the average value of a cart is Rs 1400 per order.
Localbanya had raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from real estate development group Karmvir Avant Group in January 2014 and BCCL’s Springboard fund in July 2013. The investment from January 2014 was planned to strengthen its operations, hiring and marketing operations. Founded in May 2012 by Karan Mehrotra, Amit Naik and Rashi Choudhary, the platform currently offers grocery and bakery products, household products and kitchenware among other broader categories.
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Price comparison YouTellMe.com acquires coupons portal Priceburp.com
One year old price comparison and product discovery startup YouTellMe.com is set to acquire coupons portal Priceburp.com. The company said that they have plans for raising a Series A funding of $1-1.5 million in the next 2 months. Priceburp’s operational team will integrate with YouTellMe to populate the latter’s merchant coupons and deals vertical. YouTellMe will add product prices, coupons and deals from over 500 online stores in the next 6 months. The Series A funding will go towards product development, marketing plans and adding employees.
Offering comparison across electronics, fashion, books and kitchen accessories, the platform lets users rate and review products and online stores. Currently, the company claims to have products from over 30 online stores, 800 categories and over 3 million products listed on the platform. In December 2014, the Mumbai based YouTellMe raised $100,000 from Bright Ventures. The company said then, that they planned to raise additional funds from investors to support further optimization of the platform and expand its team.
Priceburp, on the other hand, was formed in 2010 and claims to have over 5000 coupons. Founded by Nirav Dave, the Mumbai based startup raised $100,000 from Bright Ventures, Netherlands in October 2014. At the time, the company said that the funds would go towards growing the team and facilitating tech development. It had also mentioned that a unique partnership was in the offing, which has now resulted in the merge with YouTellMe.
