Social commerce unicorn DealShare is now on a lookout to hire 1,500 employees, acquire 10 businesses this year

• DealShare is looking to hire upto 1,500 employees across tech and product side to increase its workforce to 3,500.
• The four-year-old social commerce startup plans to expand its business 3x and enter another 100 cities in this fiscal year.
• It serves more than 3 lakh orders per day across 1,000 pin codes spread over 150 cities in 10 states.

Grocery-focused social commerce startup DealShare is looking to hire upto 1,500 employees across tech and product side to increase its workforce to 3,500 by the end of this fiscal year. The company has already doubled its workforce to 2000 since last year, Vineet Rao, founder and chief executive officer of DealShare, told Business Insider.

The hiring outlook is a part of DealShare’s plans to further strengthen its business this quarter by focusing on filling the gaps in the business in order to build a stronger offering. Simultaneously, the company plans to expand its business 3x and enter another 100 cities in this fiscal year (FY 22-23).

“Because we were growing up so fast there have been lots and lots of problems that have also creeped in. In some places my assortment is not perfect the way it should be, people are not finding all the things that they should find in DealShare, in some places pricing and promotions are not right, in some places the inventory is not available as much as it should be,” Rao told Business Insider.

DealShare serves more than 3 lakh orders per day across 1,000 pin codes spread over 150 cities in 10 states. The company believes that even with the expansion to 250 cities, a large part of their traffic would come from their existing 150 cities instead of the newly added 100 cities.

The company also claims to have crossed a billion dollars in gross revenue run rate last month.

DealShare has raised $393 million to date since its inception in 2018. The company was founded by Vineet Rao, Sourjyendu Medda, Sankar Bora and Rajat Shikar. It primarily focuses on sale of groceries and household essentials through social media and messaging platforms like WhatsApp.

The Jaipur-based company entered the unicorn club earlier this year, after being valued at $1.7 billion. DealShare competes with other social commerce platforms like CityMall and BulBul, among others.

Looking beyond hiring, Dealshare has plans for inorganic growth, too

The company is also looking to strengthen its business by acquiring 5-10 small brands, with their own manufacturing units, in an attempt to expand its offerings. Rao emphasised that they would be looking to acquire fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and staples companies majorly, but will also look at essential fashion.

The four-year-old startup has not yet decided on an average ticket size yet as the deal size would depend on the acquired company. Rao noted that the transaction could go as low as ₹25 crore. The company is currently exploring options for debt to fund these acquisitions.

Separately, DealShare also claims to always be on the lookout for acquiring companies that can further boost its operations like logistics or technology.

The Jaipur-based startup claims to have over 1,000+ micro-entrepreneur partners registered on the platform, who help sell products online. The company targets to increase this figure to 5,000 by year end, DealShare’s chief operating officer and founder Sankar Bora previously said.

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