Exactly a year after raising $62 million, in Series E funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, online grocery delivery company Grofers has raised $60 million in fresh funding from SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF), reported Economic Times.
SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF) is a subsidiary of SoftBank that invests $100 million or more in growth stage leading companies.
Other investor - Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital also contributed to the funding. According to the report, SoftBank invested $37.49 million in Grofers, Tiger Global pumped in $19.99 million, while Sequoia Capital injected $1.99 million in the startup.
As Grofers is banking on its FMCG private labels to drive its second phase of growth, the fresh infusion would help Grofers continue its expansion into the fast-moving consumer goods (FMGC) segment, said the report.
The latest round of funding has pushed the company's valuation to $425 million, according to estimates from business intelligence platform Paper.vc. The Series E round of last year gave the company a pre-money valuation of $238 million.
This was the first tranche of a larger $120-140 million Series F financing round that Grofers is looking for.
Grofers has raised just over $300 million since its inception in 2013, according to its Crunchbase profile.
Grofers has been putting together a strategy to make cheaper consumer goods available to the masses. "There are logistics and storage costs involved in transporting goods from the manufacturers to the wholesaler and then to the retailer. All of that goes away in our case," founder Saurabh Kumar had told Economic Times earlier.
While Grofers is yet to attract new investors to conttribute the balance capital for Series F closure, SVF is expected to invest a further $40 million in the company.
According to regulatory filings made in Singapore, the renegotiated shareholders agreement for Grofers also caps Softbank’s maximum stake in the company to 49%.
SVF, which has a total size of massive $100 billion, has made 54 investments. Its most recent investment was in this month when it invested whopping $1.5 billion in Beijing-based Chehaoduo, an online car trading platform that directly links individual car sellers and buyers.