Zovi co-founders raise $50M to launch hyperlocal deals app in India

Manish Chopra and Satish Mani, co-founders at Zovi, announced today they’ve raised US$50 million to launch a new venture, Little. The round was led by PayTM and an undisclosed investor, while SAIF Partners and Tiger Global also participated. Little says it will use the funding to hire senior-level talent, cultivate a merchant ecosystem, and build out its tech platform.

The venture will be mobile-only and aims to be India’s largest consumer lifestyle deals marketplace. The app also wants to offer online-to-offline (O2O) features in India, an opportunity it believes will represent somewhere close to US$64 billion by 2016. The startup’s goal is to offer 50,000 live deals in 11 cities by next March. Little currently has a team of 400 – which is really not so little – and expects to have 1,000 more employees on board by the middle of next year.

“Little’s differentiating strength and power will come from having the largest and deepest merchant base who see Little as their sales partner,” says Chopra, CEO.

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While Little’s endgame is to become a discovery platform for lifestyle deals, it also hopes to become a sales channel for merchants across several verticals like entertainment, food and beverage, spas, salons, gyms, and more. On the merchant side, it aims to become a personalized platform for acquiring customers in the area and sending out relevant offers and deals. PayTM’s deals platform will also be powered by Little.

Ravi Adusumalli, managing director at SAIF Partners, believes the O2O industry has enormous potential in India due to a booming demand for smartphones. He adds that Little’s launch is timely enough to capture the market.

Groupon India and Snapdeal are also prominent consumer lifestyle deals market players in India. Snapdeal’s discount coupon model didn’t pan out and so it pivoted to become a full fledged marketplace ecommerce site.

Groupon India recently raised US$20 million from Sequoia Capital and hopes to sustain its hyperlocal commerce deals marketplace. With rising uncertainty in the market, Little is sure to have a big challenge ahead. The app is currently available on Android, iOS, and Windows.