Naukri parent Info Edge invests around $1 million in ShoeKonnect

Info Edge India has invested around $1 million in ShoeKonnect, a B2B marketplace for the footwear industry. The fund will be deployed for scaling the business.

“ShoeKonnect has grown 10x in the last 7-8 months with unit economics being positive,” said Siddharth Vij, cofounder, ShoeKonnect.

He said that after this deal, Naukri.com will hold 30% in ShoeKonnect. As per sources, ShoeKonnect has been valued at Rs 80 crore.

Last year, Info Edge India had invested Rs 3 crore in ShoeKonnect, which was used to strengthen its technology base, scale up operations and expand in terms of the userbase of footwear buyers and sellers across India.

Bizcrum Infotech that owns the brand ShoeKonnect is a marketplace platform which enables footwear enterprises from local organized or unorganized manufacturers to connect and transact on its mobile app.

Co-founded in 2015 by Vij, Chaitanya Rathi, and Siddharth Rastogi, the company raised its first funding of Rs 95 lakh within a year of operations from the Indian Angel Network. Info Edge has been an early-stage investor in many other Internet companies like Zomato, Meritnation, Policybazaar, mydala, Happilyunmarried, Canvera, Vacationlabs, bigstylist, and bluedolph.in.

India’s total footwear market size is $6 billion, wherein $4 billion is domestic and the rest comes from exports. In the local market, a large chunk of the market comes from unorganized players, while only 20% is organized play.