Infra.market turns unicorn, raises $100 million led by Tiger Global

Infra.Market, an online marketplace for construction material, has raised $100 million led by existing investor Tiger Global Management at a valuation of $1 billion, the company said on February 25, making it India's newest unicorn.

Its other investors including Accel Partners, Nexus Venture Partners and Sistema Asia Fund invested as well.

"The new fund-raise will enable Infra.Market to enhance its technological offerings, seed newer markets and advance their initiatives such as private label brands, direct to retail channel and exports. Infra.Market is an India-based technology firm providing a one-stop marketplace for quality construction materials," the company said.

For FY20, Infra.Market posted a profit of Rs 8 crore while its revenue grew over five times to Rs 350 crore, according to regulatory filings.

“We are seeing rapid acceleration in demand as Infrastructure and real-estate companies are looking to shift their procurement to get consistent quality and minimize delays," said Souvik Sengupta, founder and CEO of Infra.Market.

He said the company was digitally transforming the inefficient construction materials supply chain in India by aggregating the capacity of small manufacturers and using cutting-edge technology.

Infra.market is India's second unicorn in the business-too-business retail space, after Udaan, which sells goods to businesses across sectors.

After traditional e-commerce where consumers moved online, online retail for business is seen as a large opportunity by many companies. Over the last few years India has seen B2B unicorns in sectors such as ecommerce logistics (Delhivery) , trucking logistics (Rivigo) and payment (Razorpay). This excludes enterprise software firms, which are also technically B2B and have seen half a dozen unicorns from India so far.

Avendus Capital was the investment banker to the deal.