GoKwik raises Rs 40cr funding from Matrix Partners India, others

E-commerce enablement company GoKwik on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 40 crore (USD 5.5 million) in funding, led by Matrix Partners India.

The pre-series A round also saw participation from RTP Global as well as angel investors like Jitendra Gupta (Jupiter founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Nitin Gupta (Uni co-founder), Utsav Somani (AngelList India Partner), Amit Lakhotia (Park+ founder), Uber executive Pradeep Parameswaran and Manish Vij (Smile Group co-founder).

Asish Mohapatra (OfBusiness co-founder and CEO), Arjun Vaidya (Verlinvest), Ramakant Sharma (LivSpace), Siddharth Puri (Tyroo), Umang Kumar (CarDekho), Anupam Mittal (Shaadi.com), and others also participated.

GoKwik co-founder and CEO Chirag Taneja said the company had raised Rs 3.75 crore as part of its initial seed round.

''GoKwik is currently working with a few pilot merchants outside India from MENA and SEA. With this funding round, we plan to double down on our efforts in the international markets. We work with over 75 leading brands in India and have reached 1 million transactions per month,'' he told PTI.

The new investment will primarily be used for scaling up and establishing a footprint in MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) and SEA (South East Asia) regions and hiring talent across tech, data, and product engineering.

Also, the platform is going to invest heavily in building industry-first tech and data solutions to optimise the conversion funnel for online brands.

GoKwik uses AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) technologies to solve challenges like Return to Origin (RTO) to solve and better Cash on Delivery (CoD) conversion rates for e-commerce players, including direct-to-consumer brands.

''E-commerce enablement players will play a pivotal role in fuelling the burgeoning Indian e-retail market which is projected to touch USD 120 billion in next 4-5 years. GoKwik is poised to redraft the traditional playbook by offering personalised solutions to improve overall conversion rates, help register higher GMV with increased RoI and provide protection against risks such as RTO to e-commerce and D2C brands,'' Taneja said.

GoKwik is working with brands like Boat, Mamaearth, The Man Company, Heads Up For Tails, The Moms Co, OZiva, TCNS Clothing Co, LimeRoad, ManMatters, Neemans, The Whole Truth, The Souled Store, and others.

Rajat Agarwal, Managing Director at Matrix India, said India is seeing a surge of direct-to-customer brands, and the share of non-marketplace, digital transactions for traditional as well as new-age brands is increasing rapidly.

''This will create opportunities for companies such as GoKwik, to offer unique to India solutions that help merchants to sell more effectively online... Globally the e-commerce enablement and especially the one-click checkout space is seeing significant interest with multiple large companies emerging over the last 18 months. We believe that the same will be true in India as well,'' he added.