Just Buy Live gets $20m in Series A, to use technology to power aam dukandaar

Just Buy Live, an e-distributor with a brand-to-retail business model (B2R), closed its Series A raising of $20 million from Alpha Capital Advisors Pvt. Ltd., a Mumbai-based niche private equity investment management firm.  The funds will be used for customer acquisition and retainer on-boarding, said Sahil Sani, co-founder_._ Describing the model as a unique one which has not been tried before, Sani says technology can help disrupt the maket for offline players. “Using technology through mobile application retailers, can now compete with online players who offer discounts and freebies. With Just Buy Live, a retailer has access to competitive pricing,” says Sani. The company makes money through its distributors. The company supplies goods directly from brand to retailer wherein every product available is listed and priced by the brand. It has currently over 25,000 users registered with it and is the official distributor for over 1,000 brands, 3 lakh products with more than 3,000 crores in inventory. It aims to have 10,000 brands and one million products on offer, reaching out to one million retailers with 1,000 crores in credit lines deployed by the end of 2016. The company was founded in February 2015 by Sahil Sani and Bharat Balachandran. Sahil says new commerce is any system that disrupts known models successfully and efficiently leading to increased profitability. Sani says Just Buy Live business model has limitless scalability and is asset-light. “It is primarily about sound unit economics where every transaction is profitable and customer acquisition and retention is cost efficient,” he further added. Just Buy currently operates across 15 cities in 10 states. It aims to expand to 500 cities and towns by the end of 2016.