Citymall has raised $75 million in a funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners as it wants to take the concept of community group buying to more small towns across the country. The company plans to use the fresh funds to expand across categories and geographies and strengthen its back-end technology, Angad Kikla, co-founder and CEO of Citymall, said.

“We want to enter new states in India and will further expand into fashion and general merchandise as well. Citymall expects gross merchandise value (GMV) on its platform to grow to $1 billion in the next 12 months. The company’s GMV has been increasing at 30 per cent month on month, and we are witnessing greater traction from tier III and II markets,” he added.

“We are impressed by the strong product-market fit and hypergrowth that Citymall has shown in the last few months,” Niren Shah, managing director and India head of Norwest Venture Partners, said. Founded in 2019 by Kikla and Naisheel Verdhan, Citymall introduced the community group buying mode in India. It targets the 500 million new-to-Internet users in tier II, III and IV cities where traditional e-commerce has failed to strike because direct-to-customer supply chains are not possible for low ticket size users living in remote towns and cities.