The company said it had one lakh sellers before the pandemic which has now grown to over 5.5 lakh with more than 30 million listings. This has led to a year-on-year growth of 17x with an annual GMV of $70 million so far.
GMV, in ecommerce parlance, refers to the total value of sales on a platform during a given period. It includes the discounts offered but does not include returns.
“The problem for India’s offline businesses still remains the same for decades and continues to do so – driving sales. Digitisation doesn’t mean having an online catalogue, digitisation in real sense means taking your business and transactions online which is what Coutloot is fueling for millions of non-branded small offline stores from India’s local bazaars,” said Jasmeet Thind, cofounder at Coutloot, which is built on the lines of the Alibaba-owned marketplace Taobao.
The firm has raised $8 million in a pre-series round led by venture capital firm Ameba Capital, SOSV, 9Unicorns Astarc Ventures and Venture Catalysts. The company said the funding was a precursor to a bigger $25 million round to be closed soon.
Founded by Jasmeet Thind and Mahima Kaul, Coutloot is a platform that allows buyers and sellers to bargain while shopping. It helps sellers list non-MRP (non-fixed-price), unbranded local market products across fashion, electronics, home decor, sports and other boxed categories that account for three-fourths of India’s retail market.
By 2022, the platform is expecting a GMV of Rs 1,000 crore on the back of rising demand coming from smaller towns. Coutloot’s best-performing sellers come from smaller towns like Nagaon in Assam, Basai near Gurugram, Korba in Chhattisgarh, Surat in Gujarat, and Ludhiana in Punjab. With a quarterly seller retention rate of 42%, Coutloot is the only SaaS O2O platform and marketplace with a seller-success rate of as high as 62%, it said.
The company’s app has been downloaded over 9 million times and an average seller on Coutloot earns up to Rs 16,000 per month.
