Moglix latest to join growing unicorn list with $120 million from Falcon Edge

Industrial goods marketplace Moglix has raised $120 million in a funding round valuing the company at a billion dollars, making it India’s latest unicorn and continuing the deal-making spree underway in the country’s internet startup space.

The Series E round was led by Falcon Edge Capital and the Harvard Management Company, with existing backers Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India and Venture Highway also investing, the business-to-business marketplace said on May 17.

Moneycontrol was the first to write about the details of the deal on March 23.

“We started six years ago with a firm belief in the untapped potential of the Indian manufacturing sector. We had the trust of stalwarts like Ratan Tata, and a mission to enable the creation of a $1 trillion manufacturing economy in India. Today, as we enter the next stage of our evolution, we feel this financing milestone is a testimony to our journey of innovation and disruption,” founder Rahul Garg said.

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Founded by Garg, a former Google executive, in 2015, Moglix sells a wide range of industrial tools, including hammers, drills, wrenches, office stationery and supplies, hospital supplies and automotive supplies. Moglix has been among the many startups tackling the business-to-business e-commerce space in India, seen as a huge market ripe for disruption after the likes of Flipkart grew in the consumer facing e-commerce domain.

It was valued at about $250-300 million in its last round in July 2019, when it raised $60 million led by Tiger at a time when the New York-based investment firm had gone on a B2B and software deal0making spree.

Its full-stack system covers procurement, packaging, supply chain financing and highly integrated software.

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“In these unprecedented times, we have pledged our support and disruptive thinking to help solve the challenge of effective distribution and sharing of oxygen concentrators covering 1M+ people in the country. Globally, we have also been instrumental, in this and the last year, in streamlining the personal protective equipment (PPE) supply-chain and distribution across 20+ countries,” Garg added.

The deal makes Moglix India’s 13th unicorn of 2021. Others who reached the milestone this year include Digit Insurance, Five Star Business Finance, Groww, Urban Company, Cred, Meesho, Innovaccer, Chargebee, Infra.Market, ShareChat and Gupshup.

“We have studied and tracked Moglix for years, driven by our global experience in investing in online MRO platforms. We are strong believers in Rahul, his first mover advantage, his full-stack solution for under-serviced customers and his ability to drive robust unit economics,” Falcon Edge Capital co-founder Navroz D Udwadia said.