udaan Accelerates Growth and Profitability Journey with Acquisition of ShopKirana

July 18th, 2025: udaan, India’s leading eB2B platform, today announced the acquisition of ShopKirana, one of the country’s fastest-growing retail-tech startups focused on empowering kirana stores. The all-stock deal marks a strategic consolidation in India’s eB2B space, reinforcing udaan’s strategy of driving profitable growth through deeper market penetration, operational efficiency, and broader geographic reach. With this transaction, Info Edge, an Indian technology holding company which owns, operates and invests in internet-led businesses joins as a shareholder in udaan, with a shared vision to digitally transform India’s retail-tech ecosystem. The transaction is subject to all regulatory approvals.

The acquisition will compliment udaan’s leadership across core categories including Staples, Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) and Hotel, Restaurant, and Catering (HoReCa). By integrating ShopKirana’s deep retailer network and core expertise in the FMCG space with udaan’s robust tech infrastructure, nation-wide supply-chain capabilities and wide credit offerings, the combined entity aims to further enhance efficiency, expand coverage and deliver greater value to retailers, brands, and consumers. This combination will further accelerate udaan’s profitability journey by scaling high-turnover categories, improving operating leverage, and delivering differentiated value through data-driven logistics and infrastructure.

Vaibhav Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, udaan, said, “This acquisition is a strategic milestone in our journey to the IPO and beyond. ShopKirana has a quality team, who have worked in-depth on the FMCG category and excelled at designing for costs. Together, we share the belief in winning by becoming a “preferred supplier to our shopkeepers” and “preferred partner to brands”. We also share the core strategy of “winning on costs”. With the combined strength of both organizations and a strong leadership team, we are well-positioned to deliver on our agenda of ‘growth with profitability at scale’.”

Sumit Ghorawat, Co-Founder, ShopKirana, said, “Joining hands with udaan marks a defining moment in our journey to empower kirana stores across India. This partnership brings together our expertise in the FMCG space with udaan’s overall scale and infrastructure advantage – enabling us to take more brands to more retailers more efficiently, capturing market share. Together, we will unlock growth across existing and emerging markets while delivering superior value to buyers, sellers, and consumers. While retailers have already shown great adoption, we believe this is the right time to come together and make B2B ecommerce mainstream for FMCG brands. We continue to work towards our shared vision of building a large, future ready GTM retail superpower and become the preferred choice for retailers, brands, employees and investors.”

The latest acquisition follows the successful closure of udaan’s USD 114 Million Series G fundraise, led by M&G Investments and Lightspeed. The capital would be strategically deployed to reinforce category leadership, particularly in high-frequency segments like FMCG and HoReCa, further drive expansion into untapped markets, and unlock operating leverage through enhanced sourcing-at-scale, improved supply chain utilisation, and rigorous cost optimisation.

Bejul Somaia, Partner, Lightspeed said, “This strategic consolidation is an important step forward in udaan’s journey towards consolidating the eB2B market, driving profitability with sustained growth and strengthening the value proposition for retailers and brands. We are happy to see udaan sharpen its execution while building a stronger, more efficient retail-tech platform in India”

Kitty Agarwal, Partner, InfoEdge Ventures, said, “This merger marks a significant step towards consolidating the leadership position of the combined udaan-Shopkirana entity in the sector. It unlocks meaningful synergies across FMCG and private label operations, with deepening presence in key clusters which will drive operating leverage. We’re looking forward to the journey ahead as the combined team executes its strategic roadmap with a path toward an IPO in India in the next 2 years.”

Founded in 2015, ShopKirana has enabled thousands of kirana stores through digital procurement, transparent pricing, and efficient last-mile delivery. With a strong footprint in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities such as Indore, Bhopal, Lucknow, Agra, Surat, and Meerut, ShopKirana complements udaan’s national market presence further strengthening the unified entity as the platform of choice for kiranas and brands across Bharat.

Over the past three years, udaan has focused on driving ‘consistent growth with profitability at scale’ by following regional cluster-led operating model reinforcing its commitment to building a sustainable and scalable business. Backed by solid business fundamentals, udaan continues to demonstrate strong contribution margin accretive growth, clocking 60%+ Year-on-Year (Y-o-Y) growth in CY 2024, alongside a 300+ basis point improvement in contribution margin. This growth trajectory has continued into CY 2025 with an additional 100+ bps contribution margin improvement year-to-date. Alongside the contribution margin growth and scale operating leverage, udaan also reduced its fixed costs by 20%, leading to a 40% reduction in EBITDA burn in calendar year CY 2024 and an additional 20% reduction year-to-date in CY 2025.