E-commerce rollup Evenflow Brands (Evenflow) on Tuesday announced that it has raised an undisclosed sum in a pre-Series A funding round from early-stage investors Village Global, Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns.
Marquee angel investors and funds such as Emil Michael (ex-Chief Business Officer at Uber), Anand Chandrasekaran (ex-Facebook, Snapdeal), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder & CEO, Paytm), Kunal Shah (Founder & CEO, CRED), MaGEHold (SG/HK Based Angel Investment Group), Moving Capital (aka Uber Alumni Investment Club), MyAsiaVC, Luminaire Capital, among others also participated in the round.
The startup will utilise the fresh funds to expand its team, make more acquisitions, and enhance its tech and operations.
Founded by former Uber executives Utsav Agarwal & Pulkit Chhabra in May 2021, Evenflow is a third-party e-commerce marketplace aggregator, similar to Thrasio that acquires third-party brands that sell on Amazon and helps build on their growth. Evenflow aims to develop over 50 such Indian brands over the next 12-18 months.
It acquires online marketplace sellers in a range of $200k-$1.5 million per brand and scales them through operational intelligence across the value-chain – marketing, branding, cataloguing, supply chain, sourcing, channel expansion. It focuses on creating multi-crore brands across categories such as home & kitchen, sports & fitness, baby care, pet care and gardening.
“E-commerce in India is still in its infancy, primed to grow exponentially in the coming years. We are just starting with the vision to build everyday sellers into category-defining brands – not only in India but also internationally,” said Utsav Agarwal, co-founder & CEO at Evenflow.
“With this round of investment & experience of local and global investors on board, we are confident of getting our fundamentals stronger to prepare us for scale in the coming years,” added Agarwal.
Sandeep Varaganti, CEO of Marketplace at Reliance Retail and former CEO of Prione (a joint venture between Catamaran Ventures and Amazon), has also come on board as a strategic investor in the Mumbai-based startup.
Anne Dwane, Partner at Village Global, said, “We loved the team at Evenflow and the way they’re approaching the space in their unique way. We are thrilled to back them and share their vision and speed at which they’ve been building capabilities.”
The investment in Evenflow marks Village Global’s entry into the Indian e-commerce aggregator space. The San Francisco-based VC backed by multi-billionaire entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Anne Wojcicki has invested in over 200 startups across the globe.
Dr Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder of Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns, added, “India’s digital-first online brands is going to be a $100 billion opportunity over the next 4-5 years.”
“With Evenflow, several of these brands can become ₹100 crore brands in a short time, and we are very optimistic about Evenflow’s capacity to build and grow these brands,” added Sharma.
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