According to Co-Founder and CEO Jarrar Shah, e-commerce firm 24SEVEN has secured $6 million in Pre-Series A financing to expand its Apni Dukan platform.
The business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) venture, formerly known as 24seven.pk, digitally transforms and rebrands mom-and-pop shops into 24SEVEN Apni Dukan resellers.
More than 2,500 resellers have now been onboarded in five locations. They can use a digital supply chain to obtain and store items for later sales to customers.
“This is our first major round. We had a smaller one that raised $270,000 back in 2020,” said Mr. Shah
Betatron Venture Group, Newlin VC, Verity Capital, Argo’s Quest, as well as numerous additional family offices and angel investors, joined SOSV in leading the Pre-Series A investment.
With the additional money, the business will be able to better serve both Apni Dukan partners and the households that purchase their groceries. A portion of the investment will also be used to expand into “a number of additional cities, including Karachi and Islamabad”.
Mr. Shah declined to disclose the total business value that the new investors used to purchase shares in exchange for their investments.
The company’s gross merchandise value (GMV), a popular E-commerce statistic that counts the cost of goods processed for sale by an app or website, was also left out by the speaker.
Mr. Shah observed that the performance metric has increased month over month by more than 40% over the past 12 months, adding that the company is “extremely fast” increasing its GMV.
Despite the fact that the actual average is just about half of that, the company has the potential to enroll 500 shops per month.
“It’s on purpose. We want to deepen our relationship with our existing partners (shop owners) first. We’ll increase the monthly average when we go into other cities,” he said.
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