Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Yaantra, a smartphone refurbishing startup, has raised around ₹20 crore ($3.1-million) in a bridge funding round from its existing investors Carpediem Capital Partners and Duane Park.

The fresh funding will be used for expanding the startup’s presence to 25 tier-II cities by 2018. Jayant Jha, CEO at Yaantra, says that the funding raised in the current round will further boost the company’s relationship with key partners and help maximize the impact of its offerings.

He further adds that the company has been growing profitably and reported growth of over 25 percent on month-on-month basis in sales. He said:

The majority of the capital will be deployed to enhance our e-commerce platform and improve its technical capabilities as we intend to bring in more Yaantra-certified retailers on to it. Further, a part of the funds will also be used to expand our geographical presence.

The company was founded in 2013 by Jayant Jha, Ankit Saraf and Anmol Gupta. It was earlier known as Gadgetwood, but last year, the company rebranded itself as Yaantra.

Last year, it had raised about ₹39 crore ($6 million) in Series A funding from Carpediem Capital Partners and Duane Park. Carpediem Capital is an India-focused private equity fund that focuses on small and medium-size businesses.

Prior to the Series A round, the startup had raised an undisclosed sum from angel investors of Indian Angel Network including Ajai Chowdhry of HCL, Ashvin Chadha of North India Sotheby’s International Realty and Yogesh Bansal of ApnaCircle.com, among others.

Yaantra sells refurbished multi-brand smartphones with warranty. It also provides on-demand multi-brand smartphone repair services across Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.

By Jeet