Infra.Market Becomes India’s Latest Unicorn After $100-Million Fundraising

Infra.Market has raised $100 million in a growth round led by led by Tiger Global, valuing the procurement marketplace for construction materials at $1 billion.

Existing investors such as Accel Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Evolvence India Fund, Sistema Asia Fund and Foundamental Gmbh, too, participated in the fundraising, the four-year-old startup said in a statement on Thursday. Avendus Capital was the exclusive financial adviser to Infra.Market on the transaction.

Founded in 2016, the Mumbai-based company operates as a one-stop marketplace for real estate and construction materials. It also focuses on high-volume construction products under its own brands and aims to solve existing issues such as a lack of price transparency, unreliable quality, a fragmented vendor base and inefficient logistics.

More than two-thirds of sales are contributed by the company’s own brands.

Infra.Market, in the statement, said it caters to both institutional customers and retail outlets in the construction materials sector, and supplies across 10 states in India. Besides, the firm exports to markets such as Dubai, Singapore, Bangladesh.

It counts Tata Projects, Crystal Group, Ambuja Cement, among others, as its clients.

The new fundraising, according to the company, will be used to enhance its technological offerings, seed newer markets and advance their initiatives such as private label brands, direct to retail channel and exports.

“We are digitally transforming the highly inefficient construction materials supply chain in India by aggregating the capacity of small manufacturers and adding our cutting-edge technology and services stack,” Souvik Sengupta, founder of Infra.Market, said in the statement. The firm, he said, is seeing rapid acceleration in demand as infrastructure and real estate companies are looking to shift their procurement to get consistent quality and minimise delays.

Infra.Market said it’s going to significantly benefit from a 34% increase in allocation for infrastructure projects in the Union Budget 2021.

The startup, according to filings with the RoC, is also one of the rare profitable unicorns. It’s revenue jumped more than five times to Rs 350 crore in the financial year ended March 2020. Its consolidated profit stood at Rs 8.59 crore in FY20.