Bengaluru-based Social media commerce company Windo has raised $500,000 in a seed round led by Unicorn India Ventures. The round also saw participation from prominent angels like Meena Ganesh, CEO of Portea, Aravind Sanka, CEO of Rapido, Srinivas Anumolu of GrowthStory, and Vivek Bhargava, a well known digital media expert and co-founder of ProfitWheel. The company plans to use the funds for product development and to enhance the customer experience while growing and aim for achieving product-market fit and to also launch in outside India regions.
Windo, founded in 2020, by second-time entrepreneurs Silus Reddy Chintapalli and Rakesh Vaddadi, is an Instagram commerce-focused tech startup that is helping small businesses and solopreneurs capitalize on consumers flocking to Instagram.
“We want to act as a technology team for solopreneurs and small businesses and help them build their online store in under 2-minutes by helping them convert their Instagram page into an online store, all while keeping it affordable & flexible. We believe that anyone, anywhere should be able to start selling online easily and we are working towards the same,” said Silus Reddy, Co-founder & CEO, Windo.
The company said that it aims to become a one-stop-shop where sellers can control everything from the app by enabling features such as centralized inventory, order management, pricing, etc. Windo is targeting an ARR of one million dollars in the next 12 months.
“At Unicorn India Ventures, we have always backed high potential startups. Our portfolio performance is an indicator of the unusual bets that we have taken. We believe Windo is also a unique proposition as they are enabling and unlocking the potential of e-commerce by enabling small businesses to discover newer markets and increase their revenues as currently, most of the small business list on large market places where revenues have been trickling in if not falling,” stated Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures.
According to a report by Grand View Research, the global social commerce market size is expected to reach $3369 billion by 2028. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.4% from 2021 to 2028. In India, however, the market is expected to grow at a much faster pace than the global CAGR to reach $25 billion by 2025. A large part of this explosive growth is expected to come from Instagram/Facebook.
