The Bengaluru-based business-to-business online marketplace, Udaan has just entered the unicorn club. A unicorn is a privately-held startup valued at $1 billion or more.

The 26-months-old startup will also become the fastest one to achieve this feat with the capital infusion of around $225 million from its existing investors -- DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The company is in advanced talk with the private equity firms.

A few months back, online-food ordering platform Swiggy became the fastest one to achieve this feat in four years’ time. Along with Swiggy, messenger app Hike and mobile advertisement platform InMobi also took four years to become a unicorn.

Udaan is run by Hiveloop Technology Pvt. Ltd, founded in 2016 by former Flipkart employees Amod Malviya, Sujeet Kumar and Vaibhav Gupta. Malviya is the former Chief Technology Office of Flipkart.

While Kumar was the senior operations executive, Gupta was senior vice-president, business finance and analytics at Flipkart.

Udaan is a B2B marketplace which connects traders, wholesalers, retailers and manufacturers on a single platform via a mobile app.

Udaan helps businesses discover customers, suppliers and products across categories and connect them in order to get the best deal. The platform also facilitates secure payments and gives logistics support.

Udaan has so far secured a total funding amount of $285 million.

Its first capital infusion came in November 2016, when it raised $10 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners. In February 2018, the company again raised around $50 million from its existing investor Lightspeed Venture along with, Russia-based businessman - Yuri Milner.

According to the company’s filings with the Registrar of Companies, Udaan posted gross revenue of Rs 1.69 crore and incurred net losses of Rs 5.88 crore during 2016-17.

There are around 150,000 sellers on Udaan platform across India offering products such as apparels, electronics, staples and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to wholesale buyers.

First Published:Sept 4, 2018 7:00 PM IST