Hyperlocal marketplace Zopper has raised $20 million in a Series B round of funding from Tiger Global and Nirvana Ventures Advisors. The platform will use the funding for establishing itself in 30 cities across the country, making ‘key’ appointments and developing its technology. The company will also look to rope in further retailers on its platform.
Zopper had previously raised $5 million in a round of funding in July last year from Tiger Global and existing investors Nirvana Venture Advisors and Blume Ventures. The company had also raised an undisclosed amount of investment from investors like Nirvana Ventures Advisors, Blume Ventures, Canaan India MD Rahul Khanna and Flipkart co-founders Sachin and Binny Bansal in April 2013 and had raised investment from Blume Ventures and VentureEast in June 2012.
Zopper lets users search for products and categories and compare prices, which can be bought off the e-tailers or physical shops nearby. Zopper is available on the web and on mobile apps across iOS, Android, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry. The company claimed in July last year that 60% of their traffic came from mobile phones. The company had also announced a tie-up with The Mobile Store to reduce the risk of a credit purchase, returning products and warranty problems.
The company claims that its app has seen good reception in cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata among others. They also claim that the top searches on Zopper are for product categories like electronics, home appliances and home entertainment among others.
Zopper was founded by Surjendu Kulia and Neeraj Jain in 2011. It has tie-ups with e-tailers such as Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal, Myntra and Jabong among others. Earlier in March this year, Zopper said it would expand to 30 more cities, for which it had already brought on board 250,000 offline retailers from various cities.
Competition:
– Earlier this month, MySmartPrice tied-up with 300 physical mobile stores to offer its users price comparison and shopping from nearby locations.
– Amazon’s Junglee.com offers direct purchases from the website besides aggregating products. The platform started selling unboxed and refurbished electronic products from Overcart and GreenDust in April.
– Axel Springer-owned fashion & lifestyle products aggregation site ShopAlike, which entered India in May 2014.
– Fashion and lifestyle e-commerce portal Yebhi.com switched from being an e-commerce site to an aggregator of products from other e-commerce platforms, like Myntra, Jabong, and Flipkart among others, as well as a couponing site.
