Udaan (company)

Udaan is an Indian business-to-business e-commerce company founded by Flipkart veterans Sujeet Kumar, Amod Malviya and Vaibhav Gupta. It was registered as Hiveloop Technology in 2016.

The company picks up products from manufacturers and sellers in 80-100 cities and delivers across 800-900 cities and towns. It operates in the apparel, electronics, staples and fast moving consumer goods, clothing accessories, home appliances, kitchenware, toys, stationery, footwear and babycare.

Udaan offers credit lines to buyers and sellers on their platform financed by Udaan and non-banking partners.Non Banking Financial Companies working with Udaan are Hiveloop Capital Private Limited and Northern Arc Capital Limited.

Udaan allows users to make ecommerce purchases and sales with secure payments and organized logistics. The platform is made for users to solving trade issues between small, medium, and large businesses across India looking to source merchandise from manufacturers, brands, white labels, and importers. The Udaan platform allows users to gain access to new markets in India with a low-cost and reliable shipping and delivery service. Udaan allows buyers and sellers to have one-on-one discussions with each other to negotiate terms of their transactions.

For each buyer to make purchases of products sold on Udaan they must meet the Minimum Order Quantity (MOQ) or Minimum order value (MOV) set by the seller, however buyers may privately message sellers to negotiate a lower MOQ or MOV.

Return requests may be made from buyers purchasing products through Udaan because they are missing expected products or items, their order is damaged, or are having logistics issues with their orders. Different products sold on Udaan have time requirements placed on them for their return requests to be submitted from the date of shipment delivery: clothing (7 days), food-FMCG (3 days), phones (2 days), Information technology products (2 days), VAS (2 days), accessories and consumer electronics (2 days), footwear (14 days), toys and baby care (7 days), stationary and office supplies (7 days), fresh products (1 day), and pharmaceutical products (15 days).

In November of 2016, Udaan raised $10 million in Series A funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners India and LIghtspeed US participated in the round.

Udaan raised $50 million in February 2018 for their Series B round. Lightspeed Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners India and Apoletto led the round. Udaan committed the funds to expanding their team, technological infrastructure and expand their offerings.

Announced in September of 2018, Udaan raised $225 million in Series C funding. DST Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners participated in the round. The funding round valued Udaan at $1 billion, which came within 26 months of its launch.

Udaan announced $585 million raised in October 2019 for their Series D funding round. Participation in the round came from Tencent Holdings, Altimeter Capital, Footpath Ventures, Hillhouse Capital group, GGV Capital, Citi Ventures, DST Global and Lightspeed India Partners. The post-funding valuation of Udaan was somewhere between $2.3 and $2.7 billion.

They committed the new capital to extending their supply chain network and to scale UdaanCapital.