Mumbai: Bengaluru-based Instagram/Social commerce powering tech company WINDO has raised $500,000 in a seed round led by Unicorn India Ventures. The round also saw participation from prominent angels like Meena Ganesh, CEO of Portea, Aravind Sanka, CEO of Rapido, Srinivas Anumolu of GrowthStory and Vivek Bhargava, a well known digital media expert and co-founder of ProfitWheel. The company plans to use the funds for product development and to enhance the customer experience while growing and aim for achieving product-market fit and to also launch in outside India regions.
WINDO, founded in 2020, by second-time entrepreneurs Silus Reddy Chintapalli and Rakesh Vaddadi, is an Instagram commerce-focused tech startup which is helping small businesses and solopreneurs capitalise on consumers flocking to Instagram. BITS Pilani alumni Silus and Rakesh are solving the broken Instagram commerce experience that is happening right now and exploding. There are several small businesses & sellers already using Instagram to sell their products (almost exclusively). Instagram has become the go to app for millennials and GenZ shoppers to discover the latest trends be it fashion, beauty, lifestyle, food, travel etc. While the discovery part is largely satisfactory, the purchase piece is completely broken. Currently, final purchases are being closed on DMs which is inefficient and unscalable.
Silus Reddy, Co-founder & CEO, WINDO, says, “We want to act as a technology team for solopreneurs and small businesses and help them build their online store in under 2-minutes by helping them convert their Instagram page into an online store, all while keeping it affordable & flexible. We believe that anyone, anywhere should be able to start selling online easily and we are working towards the same.”
WINDO aims to become a one stop shop where sellers can control everything from the WINDO app by enabling features such as centralised inventory, order management, pricing etc. One can choose the products from their feed, add prices & stock & share the shop with their customers easily. WINDO Shop makes it easy for anyone to manage their online business by increasing orders, helping them set up a professional-looking e-commerce store and market their products with ease to their Instagram customers. The Company is targeting an ARR of 1 million dollars in the next 12 months.
Bhaskar Majumdar, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, says, “Instagram has emerged as the most powerful social tool for internet consumers. Shoppers spend hours on Instagram to discover trends and products matching their preferences. We expect social commerce with a focus on Instagram to become a highly attractive segment in the next 2 years. At Unicorn India Ventures, we have always backed high potential startups. Our portfolio performance is an indicator of the unusual bets that we have taken. We believe WINDO is also a unique proposition as they are enabling and unlocking the potential of e-commerce by enabling small businesses to discover newer markets and increase their revenues as currently, most of the small business list on large market places where revenues have been trickling in if not falling. WINDO is a solid alternative for online first and D2C small and medium brands.”
Over 1 billion people use instagram every month. According to a report by Grand View Research, the global social commerce market size is expected to reach $3369 billion by 2028. It is expected to grow at a CAGR of 28.4% from 2021 to 2028. In India, however, the market is expected to grow at a much faster pace than the global CAGR to reach $25 billion by 2025. A large part of this explosive growth is expected to come from Instagram/Facebook. WINDO is poised strongly to leverage this trend as it helps sellers improve their conversion rate by enabling them to use Instagram more effectively and result in driving sales.
