Social commerce firm Mall91 gets $7.5m from Go-Ventures, Beenext, others

Indian social commerce startup Mall91 has raised US$7.5 million in a series A round led by Go-Ventures, the investment arm of Indonesian ride-hailing unicorn Gojek.

Existing investors Beenext, Kalaari Capital, and AngelList India also participated in the round, which follows Mall91’s seed funding last year.

Photo credit: Georgejmclittle

The company said it will use the fresh funds to become a one-stop shop for India’s internet users and expand internationally. It looks to drive business growth and augment product development, roadmap execution, and supply chain capabilities.

“We are excited about this partnership, and with backing from such strong supporters, Mall91 will be able to scale to greater heights and deliver an exceptional experience to our patrons. While we focus on enhancing our platform and offerings, we will also aim to expand our talent pool to drive our ambitious growth plans,” Nitin Raj Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Mall91, said.

The company seeks to grow its engineering, operations, marketing, and support teams and make its platform available in eight more local languages.

Founded in 2018, Mall91 combines various functions such as gaming, video, chat, payments, and social shopping onto one platform. It features live video-based shopping, voice recognition-enabled catalog discovery, and chat-based checkout. Mall91 claims to have reached over 2,000 places in India.

Most recently, DealShare – another social commerce player in the country – snagged US$11 million in series A money from Matrix Partners India, Falcon Edge Capital, DST Global, Omidyar Network, and other angel investors.

The Jaipur-headquartered company said it will use the new funds to bolster its logistics model and launch new programs for last-mile supply chain and an online-to-offline store.