Bizongo has raised $30 million as part of its Series C funding. The major investor in this round is Schroder Adveq, a hedge fund out of Switzerland. Other investors to have participated in this round are some of Bizongo’s existing investors, B Capital, Accel, Chiratae Ventures and IFC.
Bizongo is a startup that offers an online platform for B2B transactions in the packaging space. The company wants to expand its current offerings by adding pharma packaging to the portfolio and to make its reach wider across the country.
Commenting on the closure of the Series C fundraising, Aniket Deb, Co-founder and CEO of Bizongo said, “We are very excited to have Schroder Adveq as an investor and at the same time, participation from all the existing investors gives us the vote of confidence that we are on the right track. Bizongo has witnessed a significant improvement in operating metrics since the last round of financing and the current round will further help us grow the business in a sustainable way. The funds will be deployed to ramp up technology, expand into newer sectors like pharma packaging, and increase Bizongo’s penetration across India.”
The last time the startup raised funds was in 2018 when it got $22 million as part of the Series B funding. B Capital and IFC were the major investors in that round as well.
The online B2B marketplace is still be fully evolved in the Indian context. The traditional way of supply chain has been difficult to break. The field of packaging in particular is a very highly fragmented one and getting the sellers and buyers in this category to do transactions online is a challenging one. Bizongo appears to have found the right formula for doing it and the addition of pharma packaging can add a lot of meat to the business.
Though fragmented, the volume of packaging bought and sold in the Indian market is quite huge, estimated to be worth $70 billion. The USP that Bizongo brings to the table is assuring 100% availability of packaging material when sourced through its platform. It has been reported that customers using Bizongo to fulfil their packaging requirements end up saving around 2% to 5% on their packaging costs. In a highly competitive environment saving even one percent on input costs can translate into higher savings overall.
Besides the online marketplace for packaging material, Bizogo offers turnkey solutions from designing to delivery of packaging to their customers. Bizongo’s clients include some of the leading e-commerce, retail, FMCG, FMCD companies operating in India.