Sterne India Pvt. Ltd, which operates retail-technology startup Arzooo, has raised funding from Zoom Video Communications Inc. founder Eric Yuan and Silicon Valley-based venture capitalist Bill Tai.
The Bengaluru-based company will use the capital money to scale up technology, operations and quality of service, Arzooo said in a statement. It will also deploy a part of funding to ramp its business-to-business platform Go Store.
Arzooo didn’t disclose the amount that Yuan and Tai invested. However, the investment is likely part of the company’s Series A funding round.
The startup had last month raised $7.5 million (Rs 55.25 crore) in Series A funding from US-based technology venture fund WRVI Capital, 3Lines Venture Capital, the UAE-based Jabbar Internet and other investors it didn’t name at the time. Digital media publication Entrackr reported at the time that Yuan and Tai had invested in Rs 2 crore each in Arzooo.
“Having one of the biggest tech entrepreneurs, who has built a $100 billion technology company with Zoom, is a great addition to the team," said Khushnud Khan, co-founder of Arzooo.
Arzooo said this is Yuan’s first investment in India. It added that Tai was among the investors in Twitter and Zoom.
The startup was founded in 2018 by Khan and Rishi Raj Rathore, former Flipkart colleagues and IIT-Kharagpur alumni. Its platform helps physical retailers to compete with e-commerce firms like Amazon and Flipkart.
Arzooo says it has a network of more than 5,000 partner stores across more than 20 cities including Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad.
The startup recently launched a digital credit lending product, Arzooo Credit, to offer working capital to its partner stores. Arzooo Credit claims to have over 5,000 partner stores across 10 cities.
The larger retail-technology sector has recorded a few deals in the past couple of years.
In July, Rudraksha Tech Labs Pvt. Ltd, which operates contactless retail-tech startup Gobbly, raised $500,000 in seed funding.
In August last year, Slingloft Technologies Pvt. Ltd had raised seed funding. The firm helps retailers to manage their loyalty and engagement network.
In July that year, Walmart Labs, the technology arm of US-based multinational retail giant Walmart Inc., acqui-hired Indian startups FloCare Labs Pvt. Ltd and BigTrade Infosystems Pvt. Ltd to strengthen its customer service systems.
