India’s Moglix valued at $1 billion in $120 million fundraise

Moglix, an industrial business-to-business marketplace in India, said on Monday it has raised $120 million in a new financing round at $1 billion valuation, becoming the 13th firm from the world’s second largest market to attain the unicorn status this year.

The startup’s Series E financing round was led by Falcon Edge Capital and Harvard Management Company (HMC). Existing investors, Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India and Venture Highway also participated in the round, which brings Moglix‘s to-date raise to about $220 million. TechCrunch reported earlier this year that Tiger Global was in talks to invest in Moglix at $1 billion valuation.

“We started six years ago with a firm belief in the untapped potential of the Indian manufacturing sector. We had the trust of stalwarts like Ratan Tata, and a mission to enable the creation of a $1 trillion manufacturing economy in India. Today, as we enter the next stage of our evolution, we feel this financing milestone is a testimony to our journey of innovation and disruption,” said Rahul Garg, founder and chief executive of Moglix, in a statement.

Six-year-old Moglix — founded by IIT Kanpur and ISB alumnus Rahul Garg — serves over 500,000 small, medium-sized business and enterprises. It has established 3,000 manufacturing plants across India, Singapore, the UK and the UAE and counts manufacturing giants such as Hero MotoCorp, Vedanta, Tata Steel, Unilever and Air India and NTPC as its customers.

Moglix runs a supply chain network of 16,000 suppliers, over 35 warehouses and logistics infrastructure. With close to 500,000+ SKUs on its platform, the startup claims to be the largest e-commerce platform of industrial goods in India.

Moglix, Zetwerk, and Infra.Market have built business-to-business e-commerce platforms for niche categories in the South Asian nation in recent years, illustrating wider adoption of e-commerce in India.

“Moglix’s distinctive customer value proposition and ROI are visible in its outstanding customer and revenue retention numbers. We believe Moglix is now well poised to scale and we are thrilled to back the Company in the next phase of its growth,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, Co-Founder of Falcon Edge Capital, in a statement. He said the investment firm studied and tracked Moglix for years before writing its check.

Monday’s announcement follows nearly two-dozen large-sized investments secured by Indian startups in recent months. Earlier on Monday, Pine Labs said it was raising $285 million at $3 billion valuation, up from $1 billion in early 2020. KKR said it had invested $95 million in Lenskart.

Social commerce Meesho, subscription platform Chargebee, social network ShareChat, messaging platform Gupshup, and fintech firm CRED are among some of the Indian startups that have become unicorns in recent weeks. Most of these rounds have been led by Tiger Global or Falcon Edge Capital.

This is a developing story. More to follow…

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