Prozo will use the fresh funds to expand into other regions, acquire customers, invest in technology and hire people, Jakhar said.
Dexter Capital Advisors was the financial advisor for the round.
Prozo sells its clients – mostly direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands – a supply chain service that helps them replicate Amazon Prime’s promise of same day or next day delivery.
The company offers a pay-per-use model.
“Many years back, the product was the differentiator, then branding became a differentiation, in the internet era ratings and reviews became a differentiation, then pricing became a differentiation. But private labels killed the pricing differentiation,” Jakhar told ET.
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“Today, the true differentiation is fast fulfilment. What started as “good to have” has become an important differentiation. Today, the supply chain has become a revenue enabler. Your distribution is your differentiation.”
Amazon has become the chosen destination for the top 10 brands and small as well as big brands have found it difficult to compete with the ecommerce platform’s private labels, he said. This has made brands start their own e-commerce portals and invest in other supply chains, he added.
Prozo will start providing one-day delivery to most regions in the country, he said.
“…we are covering the country from the perspective of four zones – North, South, East, West,” he said. “To cover the entire country from a one or two-2 day delivery standpoint, you need a minimum of 8 locations. We can do even better with 16 locations.”
The company, founded in 2016, provides warehousing, freight, technology, and distribution services on over 20 online marketplaces.
Clients include Reliance JioMart, McGraw Hill, Lavie, WinMagic Toys and other D2C brands across more than 10 categories.
“Between the product and the market, there is a lot of noise,” he said, referring to the various channels that brands need to interact with for e-commerce.
“There is Shiprocket for freight, for offline it is separate, B2C and B2B is different. But Prozo is end-to-end. We absorb all the noise.”
The company’s technology stack includes a warehouse management system, unified order management system, freight recommendation, transport management system, intelligent inventory placement, and insight and analytics products.
“Most of the supply chain services are not pay per use,” said Jakhar. “Our services sometimes start at Rs 2 or Rs 3 per month per product inventory. Brands can move very close to the consumer. We are doing all of this on a pay per use, plug and pay per use basis.”
Prozo has a 250-member team and it has been growing 40% month on month.
Prior to this round, Prozo had raised capital from Earlsfield Capital Partners LLP and other angel investors.
“Prozo is solving a key problem in a very large market,” said Nikhil Vora, founder Sixth Sense Ventures. “By 2025, India’s e-commerce market is expected to cross $200 billion, and there would be nearly 340 million e-commerce customers. Hundreds of enterprises, thousands of D2C brands and over a million SMEs will compete to serve this humongous customer base.”
