Five-month-old UpScalio, an e-commerce brand investor and operator, has disclosed that it has raised $ 42.5 million funding as part of its Series A round. The startup partners with promising digital-first brands that sell on e-commerce marketplaces including Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and Nykaa, and helps profitably scale them 5-10x.
The funding round was led by Presight Capital and an undisclosed global hedge fund, with participation from Heliad Equity Partners, MPGI, 468 Capital and Whiteboard Capital. It saw capital commitments from a consortium of lenders including freshly-minted unicorn OfBusiness, Innoven Capital, and Alteria Capital.
Prominent angels and advisors include Suhail Sameer (CEO, BharatPe), Radhika Ghai (co-founder, ShopClues), Rohit Kapoor (CEO, OYO India and SEA), Arjun Vaidya (founder, Dr. Vaidya’s), and Erik Podzuweit (founder, Scalable Capital).
“We are also humbled by the talented e-commerce entrepreneurs that have built resilient businesses in the face of the pandemic and are grateful for their trust in partnering with us to scale their business,” said Gautam Kshatriya, CEO and co-founder of UpScalio. “We take this responsibility very seriously. This is why we have worked very hard to build an A-team of experts across e-commerce functions, ready to start scaling our partner businesses from Day 1.”
UpScalio was founded by former McKinsey & Company consultant Gautam Kshatriya, former Bain &Company consultant Saaim Khan, and former Disney Hotstar and Purplle marketing and growth executive Nitin Agarwal. It has built a team of over 50 specialists across functions with experience scaling successful e-commerce companies in India.
This team is expected to double to over 100 by the end of the year as the e-commerce accelerator launches operations with its partner businesses.
“Presight has been extremely impressed by the speed and quality of UpScalio’s execution,” said Fabian Hansen, general partner at Presight Capital. “They’ve assembled a world-class team, so it’s no surprise that they’ve already been able to partner with so many high-quality e-commerce entrepreneurs. We are thrilled to be part of their journey.”
The Indian e-commerce market is one of the fastest-growing globally, expected to grow at over 35 per cent year over the next five years. The pandemic has further accelerated this growth, with e-commerce's share of retail sales doubling over the last year.
Despite this high growth environment, marketplace entrepreneurs are sometimes unable to achieve their full potential due to capital and operating constraints. Upscalio helps solve these challenges by not only providing funding but also shouldering full responsibility for all key operations for its partner businesses. This includes multi-marketplace management, digital marketing, branding, logistics, sourcing, finance and business operations - all optimized using advanced analytics. Along the way, UpScalio also unlocks wealth for marketplace entrepreneurs, providing a full exit over time.
“Our financial services arm, Oxyzo, chose to partner with UpScalio because it was immediately clear to us that the team is highly disciplined and has a real depth of understanding of what it takes to grow their partners’ businesses,” said Ruchi Kalra, CFO of OfBusiness.
 "5-month-old UpScalio discloses fundraise of $42.5 mn in Series A round")
