Indian video e-commerce app SimSim has raised USD 6 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel and China-based venture capital firm Shunwei Capital which infused USD 2.5 million each, according to the local media Entrackr.
Newly launched VC fund Good Capital also participated in this round. Accel and Shunwei Capital now each have a 12.5% stake in SimSim, while Good Capital has laid its claim on 13.69% equity. Currently, SimSim is valued at about USD 20 million.
Founded by Amit Bagaria, Kunal Suri, and Saurabh Vashishtha,the company raised a seed round in April this year from angel investors including Sunil Kalra, Samarth Bedi, among a few others.
A video-based social commerce platform, SimSim uses video content in vernacular language to target users for buying products from its platform. Social e-commerce includes facets of social media to push online buying and selling.
SimSim’s rival social e-commerce startup Meesho, had raised USD 125 million in August 2019 in a Series D round led by South African tech conglomerate Naspers. Others who took part in the round included social media giant Facebook, SAIF Partners, Sequoia Capital India, RPS Ventures, Venture Highway, and former Vodafone Group CEO, Arun Sarin.
Rising with its contemporaries Meesho and SimSim is Bulbul, a live-streaming e-commerce platform, which claims to have 280,000 customers, and has facilitated more than 400,000 transactions since its launch in March 2019. Bulbul was picked up amongst others by Sequoia Capital India for its Surge accelerator program held in April this year. It has managed to raise USD 14.7 million till now. Another fledgling e-commerce entity EkAnek secured about USD 10 million seed round from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Ventures and Matrix Partners in March 2019.
In October 2019 social e-commerce venture, HappyShappy raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from a slew of high-profile investors including Beerud Sheth, Samuel Choi, Shivashish Chatterjee, and Yuvraja C Singh.
Investments in social e-commerce including video and influencer commerce is an indicator of strong investor sentiment in the social e-commerce segment, as more and more startups are training their guns on the lucrative and largely untapped-as-yet market existing in non-metropolitan Indian cities.