- The B2B ecommerce platform applauds the latest fundraising, especially as the startup industry is currently struggling to find investors to pump the money in.
- A recent report from PwC India stated that:
start-up financing hit a two-year low at $2.7 billion across 205 deals in the July-September quarter. - Udaan also aims to go public in the next 12-18 months.
- The company has restructured its business model and focused on cost efficiency as it plans to become profitable soon. Currently, Udaan is one of the most loss-making unicorns.
As the entire startup ecosystem faces a funding crisis this year, this outlier startup — a business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce platform called Udaan — has raised $120 million in convertible notes and debt.
With this round, the total amount Udaan has raised through convertible bonds and debt over the past four quarters has surpassed $350 million. Udaan enables small manufacturers, farmers and brands to market and sell their products nationwide at low cost with 100% payment security and complete transparency.
The company applauds the latest fundraiser, especially as the startup industry is currently struggling to find investors to pump the money in.
“Despite the funding-related challenges facing the larger startup ecosystem, this fundraiser reflects investors’ confidence in our business model and their endorsement of the journey to unity economics, driven by major advances in the evolution of our business model and cost-efficiency, which we enabled last year. have started,” said Aditya Pande, Chief Financial Officer of Udaan, in an email to employees.
In fact, a recent report from PwC India stated that seed funding hit a two-year low at $2.7 billion across 205 deals in the July-September quarter.
Moreover, only two startups in India achieved unicorn status in the same quarter. This reflects a global trend that also saw the number of new unicorns drop in the past quarter.
Experts have found it difficult to predict the end of the funding slowdown as investors remain cautious in a volatile environment.
“It’s hard to predict how long the funding slowdown will last, but it’s clear that both founders and investors are more selective and cautious when making deals,” said Amit Nawka, leader of partner deals and Indian startups at PwC India.
Besides, the B2B ecommerce startup aims to go public in the next 12-18 months.
The company has restructured its business model and focused on cost efficiency as it plans to become profitable soon. Currently, Udaan is one of the most loss-making unicorns.
It has now become crucial for startups to achieve profitability before going public as investors have become very cautious about investing in loss-making startups, as seen in the cases of Nykaa, Paytm and Zomato.