Rankz Inc’s Dukaan (1) was recently removed from Google Play Store has secured 6 million USD in its seed fundraise from Lightspeed and Matrix Partners. The company offers a digital storefront for small merchants.
Notably, the startup has alloted5,327 Seed 2 CCPS to secure the fresh tranche. Both investors, Lightspeed and Matrix, have poured 18.6 Crore INR, whereas Sprout Investments have secured 2.05 crore INR in the current fundraising.
The startup received 1.1 crore infusions from Weekendfund, a joint investment of 33 lakh, and 37 lakh INR from Appyhigh and Venture Catalyst, respectively. Moreover, the company has also managed to get a cohort of angel investors on board, including Kunal Shah, Haresh Chawla, Atul Jain, and others.
According to the estimates, the company’s value now stands at 165 crore INR or 22.5 million USD after the tranche. It has witnessed a spike of 18x from its previous valuation of 9.1 Crore INR in August 2020. Notably, the issue price per share has also increased 11 times from 7,444 to 82,189 INR per share.
Dukaan in a Legal Battle with Khatabook
Notably, the Mumbai-based company has also passed a special resolution to convert the Matrix and Lightspeed’s 242 convertible debentures into 242 Seed CCPS worth about 2 Crore.
Suumit Shah, Subhash Choudhary, and Kaustub Pandey have diluted their collective stake to 46.84% from 76.95% post allotment. Sumit Shah is the largest stakeholder with 22.19%, whereas Pandey and Choudhary retain 7.89% and 16.76% stake, respectively. Dukaan also has a fourth co-founder, Anuraag Meena.
The fresh infusions have while Dukaan is in a legal battle against Khatabook, backed by Sequoia. Dukaan had charged Khatabook for plagiarism, following which the latter filed a written petition to Karnataka High Court. The Dukaan app is removed from Play Store and barred from downloading via APK, Android Application Package.
The company claims that it focuses on small merchants like Kirana stores and pan shops and allows them to instantly set up their online stores to share inventories and offerings on WhatsApp.
