Bengaluru-based Shopflo, a SaaS startup that enables easy checkouts for D2C brands, announced today that it has raised $2.6 million in a seed funding round led by Tiger Global and TQ Ventures in the United States.
Shopflo is now one of the few Indian startups at the pre-product stage to receive seed funding from Tiger Global. Tiger Global does not primarily fund seed-stage startups. Better Capital and a group of other angel investors joined the round as well.
Shopflo has created a platform that allows direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands to improve their website checkout experience and conversion rates. The SaaS startup also assists brands in personalising these checkout experiences for their customers.
“After speaking with over 100 small merchants, we realised that there is still a gap in checkouts for smaller brands versus larger platforms that own their checkout experiences,” said Priy Ranjan, one of Shopflo’s co-founders.
Shopflo was founded in September 2019 by Priy Ranjan, Ankit Bansal, and Ishan Rakshit. The Bengaluru-based company has currently partnered with six merchants, including D2C brands and a rollup commerce brand. It has partnered with digital payment gateway companies Razorpay and Cashfree to provide checkout payment services.
“Through Shopflo, we want to ensure that customers have the same checkout experience across all small D2C brands from which they shop, as well as increase conversions for these smaller merchants.” “We’ve already seen a 15% to 20% increase in conversions for some of these brands,” Ranjan adds.
Shopflo’s founders have firsthand experience in ecommerce, payments, and SaaS. Priy and Ishan previously worked at Elevation Capital, while Ankit previously worked at communications SaaS unicorn Gupshup.
The SaaS firm plans to scale its product to 150 online merchants and process up to $300 million in gross merchandise value (GMV) checkouts this fiscal year with this round of funding, according to the statement. It also intends to broaden its operations globally.
“A seamless checkout experience has become a baseline expectation for consumers,” said John Curtius, Partner at Tiger Global, of the investment. However, ecommerce checkout hasn’t changed much in the last decade. This will be changed by Shopflo. It is well-positioned to become the default checkout for India’s rapidly growing D2C market. We are honoured to be their first supporters on this journey.”
“For a long time, checkout has been the least innovated part of ecommerce.” We are changing that with Shopflo, an innovative checkout SaaS that reimagines the buyer experience from the checkout page onwards, weaving payment, tracking, returns, and more together like never before. “I am thrilled to be working with the Shopflo team and a fantastic group of global co-investors,” said Vaibhav Domkundwar, CEO of Better Capital.
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Shopflo claims to be focusing on empowering D2C brands to provide an experience to their customers, allowing merchants to maximise long-term value from website visitors. They are now out of beta and available to select merchants, according to the company.
“Indian ecommerce is a megatrend,” said Schuster Tanger, Co-Managing Partner at TQ Ventures. The checkout section is at the bottom of the funnel, with the most intent customers. The Shopflo team impressed us with their knowledge of both D2C and payments SaaS. They are well-positioned to become the preeminent Indian company in this space, and we look forward to assisting them along the way.”