Evenflow Raises Pre-Series A Funding from Village Global, Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns and Marquee Angels

Evenflow Brands (Evenflow), an e-commerce rollup with a mission to scale up over 100 digital-first Indian brands, has raised undisclosed funding in pre-Series A round from early-stage investors Village Global, Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns.

The investment in Evenflow marks Village Global's entry into the Indian e-commerce aggregator space. The San Francisco-based VC backed by multi-billionaire entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Anne Wojcicki has invested in SellerX, a Berlin-based e-commerce aggregator.

Marquee angel investors such as Emil Michael (ex-Chief Business Officer at Uber),  Anand Chandrasekaran (ex-Facebook, Snapdeal), Vijay Shekhar Sharma (Founder & CEO, Paytm), Kunal Shah (Founder & CEO, CRED), MageHold (HK based micro fund) and a few others also participated in the round.

The startup said it would use the fresh funds to expand its team, make more acquisitions, and enhance its tech and operations.

Sandeep Varaganti, CEO of Marketplace at Reliance Retail and former CEO of Prione (joint venture between Catamaran Ventures & Amazon), has also come in as a strategic investor in the Mumbai-based startup.

Anne Dwane, Partner at Village Global, said, "We loved the team at Evenflow and the way they're approaching the space in their unique way. We share their vision and the speed at which they've been building capabilities. We are thrilled to back the team and support them in their endeavor with our learnings and the network of LPs Village Global is associated with."

To this, Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, founder of Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns, added, "India's digital-first online brands is going to be a $100 billion opportunity over the next 4-5 years. However, these brands currently cannot scale up despite having done business on top e-commerce platforms. With Evenflow, several of these brands can become Rs 100 crore brands in a short time, and we are very optimistic about Evenflow's capacity to build and grow these brands."

Evenflow was founded by former Uber executives Utsav Agarwal & Pulkit Chhabra in May 2021. It acquires and scales-up third-party sellers on marketplaces through operational intelligence across the value-chain - marketing, branding, cataloging, supply chain, sourcing, channel expansion, etc. It focuses on creating multi-crore brands across categories where consumers do not have branded options like home & kitchen, sports & fitness, baby care, pet care, gardening, etc.

"E-commerce in India is still in its infancy, primed to grow exponentially in the coming years. We are just starting with the vision to build everyday sellers into category-defining brands - not only in India but also internationally. With this round of investment & experience of local and global investors on board, we are confident of getting our fundamentals stronger to prepare us for scale in the coming years," said Utsav Agarwal, co-founder & CEO at Evenflow.

Evenflow is similar to Thrasio, a US-based company Thrasio that acquires third-party brands that sell on Amazon and helps build on their growth. Evenflow aims to develop over 50 such Indian brands over the next 12-18 months.

Amazon aggregators raised over $12 billion in 2021.  There are e-commerce aggregators in 20 different countries now- across countries like the United States, China, Finland, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Turkey, UAE, United Kingdom among others.

Lately, Indian Thrasio style e-commerce roll ups have seen massive buzz with global investors pouring over $350 million into these startups as they see a massive potential in the Indian e-commerce landscape. The segment is aggressively growing at  30% CAGR and bound to reach $100-120B GMV by 2025.

The Indian e-commerce has over thousands of digital first brands waiting to be scaled, with e-commerce penetration at barely 4.9%.  This gives startups like Evenflow a massive opportunity to acquire and grow these brands and expose great product portfolios in countries outside of India as well. These brands are mushrooming in categories such as fashion, home & kitchen, arts and crafts, home furnishing, sports and fitness, garden and utility among others.