15 November 2019, India:
Global fintech fund EMVC has invested in B2C commerce Niki as a part of Series A Funding. Existing investors including Ratan Tata, Ronnie Screwvala’s Unilazer Ventures, Haresh Chawla, LetsVenture and Japan’s Recruit Strategic Partners also participated in the funding round.
The startup will use the fresh capital to boost the growth of various verticles present on it’s commerce platform, as well as, to add new languages.
Niki, is also in discussions to raise a growth financing round of $20-30mn early next year.
Melissa Frakman, Founder and Managing Partner at EMVC, said, “Niki is changing the commerce landscape of India by unlocking a completely new user base for 1000s of service provider companies. The exceptional founding team has a uniquely personal understanding of its customers and has re-imagined a voice-first, trust-centered experience to solve for new internet users specific challenges and preferences. From a global perspective, Niki is paving a new path for solving e-commerce and fintech distribution for the world’s emerging internet economy.”
Sachin Jaiswal, CEO and Co-founder, Niki, “Since realigning our focus to cater directly to language-first consumers, we have seen brand virality and 30% month on month growth. For 84% of our Hindi transactions, it’s the user’s 1st transaction online.”
Sachin Jaiswal added, “We are on a mission to build the most trusted app to avail services online for new Internet users, and seize a $750 billion opportunity. We aim to grow this to $1 billion GMV by 2021.”
Currently, Niki is operational in 4 Indian languages, and will be adding 7 more languages in the next 12 months.
(Image – Niki)