Indian social commerce startup GlowRoad raises $10M Series B

Indian social commerce startup GlowRoad announced today that it has raised a $10 million Series B. The round was led by CDH Investments, a Chinese investment firm, with participation from returning investor Accel Partners.

GlowRoad’s last funding, a $2 million Series A led by Accel, was announced in September 2017, a few months after it launched. The startup’s founding team includes Sonal Verma, a physician who focused on community medicine before co-founding telemedicine company HealthcareMagic in 2008. During her medical work, Verma realized that many stay-at-home mothers and housewives resell products in their neighborhoods. GlowRoad was created to help them take their businesses online by drop shipping products.

GlowRoad screens manufacturers before adding them to its platform, then GlowRoad’s sellers decide which items to add to their stores and how to market them. The company now claims more than 100,000 resellers, 20,000 suppliers and 300,000 buyers. One of its most notable competitors is reselling platform Meesho, which has raised a total of $65.2 million from investors including Shunwei Capital, Sequoia Capital India, RPS Ventures, Y Combinator, Venture Highway, SAIF Partners and DST Partners, according to Crunchbase.