MUMBAI: Daily-deals site Mydala has held talks with heavyweight internet investors including Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global and Sweden's Kinnevik as it looks to raise $40 million of fresh funds to expand operations. Mydala, which counts Sanjeev Bikhchandani led-InfoEdge India as its largest investor, is also said to be in discussions with Japan's Softbank and Tiger Global, the largest institutional investor in Flipkart, at a time when billions of dollars in risk capital have flown into consumer internet ventures in India.
While $30 million will be raised in fresh capital, secondary sale amounting to $10 million is planned by the Delhi-based company, sources who did not want to be named as the fund-raise is currently ongoing told TOI.
DST Global is one of the largest internet oriented investment funds globally with a stellar portfolio that includes Facebook, Alibaba, Twitter, Zynga, GroupOn, Spotify among others while Kinnevik, is a big investor in e-commerce and online marketplace platforms like Zalando, Wimdu, Foodpanda and Quikr across high growth markets. The family-run investment firm listed in Stockholm is also a significant shareholder in the German internet incubator Rocket Internet which boasts of creating strong consumer internet stories across developing economies.
Mydala, founded in 2009, has said earlier that it has turned profitable and presently enables internet commerce of over a billion dollars in value.The group buying site is betting on becoming an advertising and promotional platform for small and mid-sized merchants instead of only offering discounts on services like spas and restaurants. Sources close to the development said Mydala is eyeing a valuation of $200 million, which will catapult the five-year-old company into the elite club of startups valued at Rs 1,000 crore --Bookmyshow, Zomato and Olacabs being the new entrants.
Emailed queries sent by TOI to DST Global and Kinnevik did not elicit a response. Mumbai-based investment bank Equirus Capital has been mandated for the fund--raise.InfoEdge owns around 47% in the company with the three founders Anisha Singh, Arjun Basu,and Ashish Bhatnagar holding the rest of the stake along with a set of early angel investors. Some of the other Indian group buying players include the likes of Dealsandyou, GroupOn India among others.The daily-deals category registered torrid growth in 2010-11 leading to the famous GroupOn IPO only to see many players wither away or change business models globally and in India. In the recent past biggies like Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers have moved away from pure services to selling products and TVs becoming more like an e-commerce platform. Groupon acquired South Korean e-commerce marketplace Ticket Monster along with fashion site Ideeli earlier this year.
What has helped Mydala's growth is the focus on mobile and non-metro cities. It currently receives 50 million unique visitors monthly of which 80% are through the mobile platform.
The daily deals sector, which has not seen many successes, still draws skepticism among industry experts. Nitin Chhabria, CEO at the Bangalore-based e-commerce consultancy Ace Turtle, said the basic premise of small local businesses giving high discounts to acquire new customers hoping they would return and pay a higher price has not happened. What will be significant for Mydala is to diversify beyond deals and emerge as a hyper-targeted marketing platform for merchants with a focus on tier-ii and tier-iii cities.
While $30 million will be raised in fresh capital, secondary sale amounting to $10 million is planned by the Delhi-based company, sources who did not want to be named as the fund-raise is currently ongoing told TOI.
DST Global is one of the largest internet oriented investment funds globally with a stellar portfolio that includes Facebook, Alibaba, Twitter, Zynga, GroupOn, Spotify among others while Kinnevik, is a big investor in e-commerce and online marketplace platforms like Zalando, Wimdu, Foodpanda and Quikr across high growth markets. The family-run investment firm listed in Stockholm is also a significant shareholder in the German internet incubator Rocket Internet which boasts of creating strong consumer internet stories across developing economies.
Mydala, founded in 2009, has said earlier that it has turned profitable and presently enables internet commerce of over a billion dollars in value.The group buying site is betting on becoming an advertising and promotional platform for small and mid-sized merchants instead of only offering discounts on services like spas and restaurants. Sources close to the development said Mydala is eyeing a valuation of $200 million, which will catapult the five-year-old company into the elite club of startups valued at Rs 1,000 crore --Bookmyshow, Zomato and Olacabs being the new entrants.
Emailed queries sent by TOI to DST Global and Kinnevik did not elicit a response. Mumbai-based investment bank Equirus Capital has been mandated for the fund--raise.InfoEdge owns around 47% in the company with the three founders Anisha Singh, Arjun Basu,and Ashish Bhatnagar holding the rest of the stake along with a set of early angel investors. Some of the other Indian group buying players include the likes of Dealsandyou, GroupOn India among others.The daily-deals category registered torrid growth in 2010-11 leading to the famous GroupOn IPO only to see many players wither away or change business models globally and in India. In the recent past biggies like Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers have moved away from pure services to selling products and TVs becoming more like an e-commerce platform. Groupon acquired South Korean e-commerce marketplace Ticket Monster along with fashion site Ideeli earlier this year.
What has helped Mydala's growth is the focus on mobile and non-metro cities. It currently receives 50 million unique visitors monthly of which 80% are through the mobile platform.
The daily deals sector, which has not seen many successes, still draws skepticism among industry experts. Nitin Chhabria, CEO at the Bangalore-based e-commerce consultancy Ace Turtle, said the basic premise of small local businesses giving high discounts to acquire new customers hoping they would return and pay a higher price has not happened. What will be significant for Mydala is to diversify beyond deals and emerge as a hyper-targeted marketing platform for merchants with a focus on tier-ii and tier-iii cities.
