Bangladeshi B2B commerce platform ShopUp has secured $75m in a Series B funding round headed by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Prosus Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Veon Ventures and Sequoia Capital.
According to ShopUp, the oversubscribed round is the largest Series B funding round for a B2B commerce platform in South Asia. This capital raise comes on the heels of the firm’s $22.5m Series A round in October last year. Following the most recent raise, ShopUp has raised a total of $110m.
ShopUp noted that the Bangladeshi retail market is one of the most fragmented in Asia, with 98% of all retail consumption happening through 4.5m small neighbourhood ‘mom and pop’ retail shops that are spread unevenly across the country.
The firm said these shops face daily struggles when procuring goods from multiple suppliers, distributors and wholesalers – including product unavailability, lack of price transparency and unreliable delivery that can severely impact day to day business management.
ShopUp has launched three products – B2B commerce app Mokam, end-to-end logistics platform REDX and buy now, pay later solution for small retailers Baki – to help ‘remove the inherent blockers within traditional supply chain, logistics and financing’.
The company said Mokam aids neighbourhood mom and pop shops by supporting access to a catalogue of products with 24-hour doorstep delivery. Shop owners are able to source these products on credit without to pay upfront by accessing the Baki product that is embedded within the app.
Meanwhile, REDX has become the largest third-party logistics service provider in Bangladesh and helped the company deliver more than 50% of all third-party logistics e-commerce shipments across the country.
ShopUp is headquartered in Dhaka and opened an office in Bengaluru, India last year.
ShopUp CEO and co-founder Afeef Zaman said, “Our mission is to put 4.5 million small retailers in the driving seat of Bangladesh’s economic growth. We are building best-in-class infrastructure to support retail operations all over the country, adding new categories to serve the underserved small retailers and launching new financial products to meet the unarticulated needs of the retailers we serve.”
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