B2B marketplace for unorganised retail segment, Bijnis has bagged Rs 63.9 crore in its Series A round from Sequoia, Matrix Partners and its existing investors WaterBridge Ventures and Info Edge.

While Sequoia and Matrix have invested Rs 28 crore each in the fresh financing round, Info Edge and WaterBridge invested Rs 5.3 crore and Rs 2.16 crore respectively. As per Fintrackr's calculation, Bijnis (formerly ShoeKonnect) has been valued close to Rs 190 crore after the allotment of fresh equity shares.

Bijnis joins a clutch of early stage companies such as Rooter, FleetX, SimSim, Max Wholesale and several others who have constituted an ESOP pool this year.

Founded by Siddharth Vij, Chaitanya Rathi, Siddharth Rastogi and Shubham Agrawal, Bijnis

had announced the addition of apparels as a category last year. However, at present, its app is only showcasing shoes. It enables retailers to purchase directly from the source eliminating the hassle of price negotiations, quality assurance and payment security.

The five-year-old company saw its operating revenues increase 6.2X from Rs 37 lakhs in FY18 to Rs 2.3 crore in FY19. Bijnis earned 56.5 per cent of its revenues through logistic fess and the rest through commission on sales on the platform.

The company did heavy investments to achieve the increase in scale of sales. Total expenses shot up eight-fold from Rs 1.15 crore in FY18 to around Rs 9 crore in FY19. Around 52 per cent of the total expenses was spent on fulfillment and transportation of goods, 28 per cent on employee benefits and the remaining on other operational costs.

The ramping up of expenses took the P/L further into the red and losses rose 8.5X from Rs 78.5 lakhs to Rs 6.7 crore in FY19. Bijnis spent Rs 3.93 to earn a rupee as revenue in FY19, 25.5 per cent more than Rs 3.13 it spent for the same during FY18.