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Japanese investors back Indian m-commerce startup LazyLad

The startup will use the US$500,000 raised to expand in India and foreign markets such as Indonesia, Singapore

LazyLad, a mobile app that connects customers with their neighbourhood retailers, has raised US$500,000 in pre-Series A funding from Silicon Valley-based VC investor Jai Choi, with participation from Kiyohiro Sugashita (a prominent financial expert in Japan) and Hirokazu Mashita, Founder/Director of M&S Partners.

LazyLad, a startup incubated at GHV Accelerator, will utilise the funds to expand in India, besides foreign markets such as Indonesia, Singapore and other developing Asian countries. Started by Saurabh Singla, Paresh Goel and Ajay Sethi, LazyLad provides small mom and pop shops with a mobile platform to facilitate their neighbourhood commerce. Here, the customer has direct access to neighbourhood retailers in six segments –- bakery and confectionery items, flowers, fruits and vegetables, daily groceries, meats and seafood, and stationery. Based on an asset-light model, the app helps to create a direct platform for retailers to sell and for customers to buy, thereby doing away with ‘any’ middlemen in the neighbourhood/hyperlocal market. It has a presence in Gurgaon, Chandigarh and one other city as of now, and a current subscriber base of 8,000 users on Android and 200 registered retailers, facilitating around 1,000 orders a day. The startup now aims to add 50,000 sellers, reach 500,000 downloads and 80,000 orders/day in a year’s time.

The app, which was earlier available only on Android, is now also available on iOS. “We have peaked up to 1,200 orders a day, and are reaching 10,000 downloads without even fully utilising the US$100,000 raised through GHV. We are pretty excited on having Kiyohiro, Jai and Hirokazu as a part of our journey. These funds will be utilised to enhance the product to an extent, where it becomes a household name in the country, which can connect with the customer, through a powerful, scalable and asset light technology,” said Singla.

“We plan to raise a Series A round between US$5 million and US$10 million in the next six-eight months. We already have a substantial partial interest from some of the investors who may invest to the tune of US$3 million,” he added.