SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs are in talks to back Indian commerce startup ElasticRun, according to four people familiar with the matter. The proposed Series E financing round, whose size is about $200 million, values ElasticRun at over $1 billion, the sources said, requesting anonymity as the deliberations are ongoing and private.
The Pune-headquartered ElasticRun is helping millions of neighborhood stores in India secure working capital, inventory from top brands and work with e-commerce firms to boost revenues. The five-year-old startup, which counts Prosus Ventures and Avataar Ventures among its existing backers, has raised $130.5 million prior to the new round.
Sandeep Deshmukh, co-founder and CEO of ElasticRun, talks about the startup at a business conference in 2019.
The startup has developed a crowdsourced, asset-light logistics network of partners who deliver the services to the neighborhood stores (popularly known as kiranas locally).
Some of the major firms that work with ElasticRun to tap this network include Amazon, Tata Consumer Products, CocaCola, PepsiCo, and Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain.
ElasticRun and SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
If the proposed talks materialize into a deal — at the terms described in this report — ElasticRun will be the latest startup to join the coveted unicorn club. A handful of investors including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Alpha Wave Global and Sequoia Capital have become unusually aggressive in recent quarters and have competed to win deals with local young firms. Indian startups raised a record $39 billion in 2021, a year that helped mint 44 local unicorns. SoftBank alone invested over $3 billion in the South Asian market last year.
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