The Growth Of Dealshare In The e-commerce Ecosystem

• ByStartupStory     |    November 26, 2021

Among the variety of e-commerce or e-grocery companies in India, Dealshare is among the most innovative and inspiring players pioneering in the markets of India. With its unique low cost marketing, excellent customer engagement and affordable product price, Dealshare has grown 10x its size and has grown exponentially in Jaipur while holding a significant operation in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujrat and Karnataka. Since its foundation in 2018, Dealshare is known for pioneering the CGB(Community Group Buying) model in India.

Growth during the Pandemic.

In an interview with one of it’s partners “Matrix Partners India”, Dealshare’s founders Vineet Rao and Sourjyendu Medda explains how they left their high-paying jobs and started a joint-venture to gain ground on the social e-commerce market. During the covid lockdown both Vineet and Sourjyendu left from Bangalore to Jaipur to expand their business when most of the country was getting back to their families. Although they had to risk their personal health, Mr Rao and Mr Medda explains how they were received well by the authorities in their respective states and despite suffering some uncertainty in the production side due to the supply-chain crisis during Covid where they had to cut down the SKU count from 1200 to 250, Dealshare gained massive popularity among the consumers and demands kept soaring. Both the founders engaged in delivery of products and customer care services to keep the company functional.

Optimising  the Supply Chain and low cost Marketing

The core of Dealshare is to minimise the difference between the consumer and the manufacturing price, according to its founders. Mr Rao explains his mission to optimize the supplychain and increase the affordability of the mass market. To solve this conundrum and what makes them unique is their low operational cost with sharp assortment and densification of their consumer market while maintaining an affordable cost for mass consumption. Keeping both the OpEx and CapEx on the warehouse assortment low while creating a network of community leaders locally, resulting in reduction of the last-mile cost is the formula that Dealshare claims to follow. Dealshare now does 12000 deiveries in the city of Jaipur today.

Furthermore, on the marketing strategy, Dealshare have kept it a low cost, high return model by expanding its customer base on Whatsapp. By offering its customers to become influencers for the company and rewarding them with exclusive deals on the products, the strategy seem to have bear fruit with regards to its increasing customer attendance. Mr Rao also talks about investing on the machine learning, AI and gamification of the app to make it more engaging for the customers and thereby increasing their conversion rate.

Closing the Half a Billion mark, Post-valuation

The Bengaluru based e-commerce business has raised $144 million on its Series-D round. The financing round was lead by Tiger Global and co-lead by WestBridge Capital, Alpha wave incubation(backed by ADQ and managed by Falcon Edge Capital) and Z3Partners. DST Global, Matrix Partners India and Alteria Capital were also among the partners who participated in the funding round. Along with its other two fund-raise in a quick succession of 7 months, the company has raised $183 million since its foundation. The post-valuation of the company is pegged at $455 million. This is a tremendous success for the company with high-profile investors bidding for the company. Dealshare is looking to expand its business from 5 states to eyeing the international markets in the next 12 months. Mr Rao added that Dealshare would be operational in 10 states with 200 warehouses. The company is competing with Reliance, Tata Groups and Meesho in the e-commerce environment.

Future Growth and Investments

With the company already growing 10x and Mr Medda mentions that they are very close to touching single digit negative EBITDA while predicting that in the next 12 months they will turn around to positive EBITDA. Mr Rao adds that with every incremental dollar worth of investment, Dealshare now provides 20-30 dollars worth of growth. The vision of both the founders is to grow higher than billion dollar in valuation by the end to 2021. Mr Rao, emphasizes on building the software to a more fun-filled gamification app so that customer engagement remains on a maximum with elements to the likes of “Bhagta hua deal”.

Failure is Not an Option

“Failure is not an option” has been the moto for the founders of Dealshare right from the beginning and still is. “We believe India is a unique market with a highly diverse demographic and requires an indigenous model that is built based on first principes and differentiates itself from Western and Chinese e-commerce models”- Mr Rao. Its strong team, business savvy ideals of its leaders, the humble approach of its founders and exceptional customer service reflects the phenomenal success of Dealshare.

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