Dukaan gets $11-million funding from 640 Oxford Ventures, others

Dukaan, an online retail platform that helps businesses digitalise operations, has raised $11 million in a funding round led by 640 Oxford Ventures at a post-money valuation of $71 million.

Existing investors Snow Leopard Ventures, Lightspeed Partners, and Matrix Partners India also participated in the fundraising, along with HOF Capital, Old Well Ventures, LetsVenture, and 9Unicorn. A clutch of angel investors, including Oyo’s Ritesh Agarwal and Nothing CEO Carl Pei, also invested in the startup.

Dukaan had raised $6 million in seed funding from Matrix and Lightspeed in October 2020.


It helps merchants with no programming skills to set up their ecommerce stores using smartphones. About 3.5 million small and medium-sized businesses are using its platform.

The company will use the fresh capital to expand its operations, hire web designers and developers, and establish key strategic partnerships to grow its paying merchant base, said its CEO Suumit Shah who founded the company along with Subhash Choudhary last year.

Currently, 2,000 merchants pay for a premium subscription service that contributes about 10% to the company’s revenue.

The company wants to hit a $10 million revenue run rate in the next 12 months.

“We founded Dukaan because we saw small businesses and first-time entrepreneurs struggling to digitise and make their presence online,” Shah said. “We became obsessed with the idea of making the most affordable, easy-to-use, mobile-first commerce platform in the world.”

Dukaan helps merchants build customisable websites. It also allows merchants to accept payments using different modes including unified payments interface, and credit and debit cards.

The “kirana-tech” market, which helps businesses digitise, has exploded on the back of pandemic-induced digitisation.

Rival Bikayi had raised funds from Sequoia Capital India last week.

Dukaan also competes with Dotpe, and Shopify globally besides ecommerce giants Amazon and Flipkart.

“Our mobile-first approach is the biggest differentiation,” Shah told ET. “Secondly, since we are building tech in India our prices are much cheaper as compared to the rest of the global companies.”

He said Dukaan plans to foray into international markets in the near future.