Klub Announces 1st Close of Its ₹200 Cr Revenue Based Financing Fund 'Aceler8', To Invest in Consumer and SaaS Businesses

Klub, India’s leading Revenue Based Financing (RBF) platform, announced the first close of its new fund, Aceler8, to invest ₹200 crores in consumer and SaaS businesses.

Klub’s Aceler8, a SEBI registered Category II Alternative Investment Fund caters to growth-stage and late-stage D2C brands, recurring-revenue digital businesses, and SaaS companies. The fund can invest capital ranging from ₹50 lakhs to ₹20 crores to digital businesses for their marketing, inventory, and CAPEX spends.

Aceler8 is a community-backed fund with celebrities, family offices, international investors & tech founders coming together to support loved brands. The Fund’s Advisory Council includes unicorn founders like Naveen Tiwari, Founder & CEO, InMobi Group, and Vidit Aatrey, Co-Founder & CEO, Meesho. Dr. Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, Co-Founder, 9Unicorns, Mitesh Shah, Founder & CEO, Credence Family Office, and Ajay Candade, ex-Director KKR are also a part of the Advisory Council.

Anurakt Jain, Co-Founder & CEO, Klub said, "Klub is a tech-data platform enabling frictionless capital. Our Revenue Based Financing Fund, Aceler8, is a disruptive addition to our platform in-line with our mission to provide fast, flexible and scalable capital. Klub’s RBF is designed to be complementary to other capital sources for growing digital businesses.”

Klub has facilitated more than 250 investments in digital businesses so far and has a community of more than 5000 patrons investors. The company raised $20 million in one of the largest seed rounds and grew 20x this year.

The D2C segment in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25% from $44.6 billion in FY21 to $100 billion by FY25. Despite this growth, access to capital remains out of reach for most digital businesses. To solve this across digital businesses of all sizes Klub offers fast & flexible growth capital to digital businesses across all stages (early-stage, growth-stage & late stage).

A leading D2C apparel brand for millennials and India's largest on-demand private driver service provider are among the first 5 companies to raise capital through Aceler8, Klub’s Revenue Based Financing Fund. The platform’s tech-data approach enables businesses to raise capital within 5 days through seamless integration with their existing data sources. The fund aims to turbocharge growth for nearly 50 growth-stage and late-stage digital businesses.

About Klub

Klub is India’s leading Revenue Based Financing platform providing flexible growth capital to digital-first companies and SMEs. Klub provides funding for recurring marketing, inventory, and capex spending to a wide variety of digital-first companies across e-commerce, D2C, ed-tech, SaaS, and the broader digital commerce spectrum. Revenue Based Financing takes a revenue share as returns instead of equity dilution, fixed EMIs, and personal guarantees, making it ideal for a post-Covid financing ecosystem. Klub has raised two rounds of capital from 9Unicorns, Surge (Sequoia Capital India’s accelerator fund), Alter Global, GMO VenturePartners, and marquee global angels.

Meesho and Klub team up to Boost Local Manufacturing through Financing Partnership

Fintech startup, Klub has partnered with India’s social e-commerce giant, Meesho to support the local economy. This partnership aims to provide financing options for MSMEs on Meesho’s platform to enable domestic sourcing and manufacturing in the current COVID-19 economy.

Emphasizing on the honourable Prime Minister's call for self-reliance and lending support to Indian industries, the financing partnership of Klub and Meesho will provide end-to-end solutions to suppliers on the Meesho platform to raise capital for the growth of their businesses. Additionally, thisVocal for Localcollaboration will ensure flexible financing for select Meesho suppliers to source input material through domestic manufacturing units, and in turn, expand their business.

Commenting on the financing partnership, Anurakt Jain, Co-founder and CEO , Klub, said, “ As an embedded financing partner for Meesho, we look forward to combining our expertise and unique financial solutions with Meesho’s reach to provide some relief to small businesses. Klub’s goal is to enable local brands to reach their growth potential by offering flexible financing solutions." Founded by Anurakt Jain and Ishita Verma, and backed by Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program, Klub is actively building a platform to offer much-needed capital to local entrepreneurs in the Indian market.

Founded by Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, Meesho currently has close to 4 million women entrepreneurs and 50,000 suppliers on its platform, who have in turn created more than 100,000 jobs in Tier 2 and 3 cities. "We are very excited to come together with Klub with a shared vision of converting business dreams to reality despite the challenges of the current economic situation," highlighted Vidit Aatrey, CEO, Meesho. The brand aims to encourage more local entrepreneurs to start up their businesses and eventually bolster the Indian economy by providing capital assurance through this partnership.

At a time when Indian MSMEs are reeling from the COVID-19 credit impact and are seeking alternative options for financing and growth, this partnership between the two home-grown startups further enables local manufacturing in the country.

About Klub

Klub is a fintech platform that provides skin-in-the-game growth capital to loved consumer brands through Revenue Based Financing (RBF). Klub is backed by marquee investors including Surge, Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program, EMVC Fintech Fund, and many prominent angels.

About Meesho

Meesho, founded by IIT-Delhi graduates Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal in 2015, is India’s largest social commerce platform that enables anyone to start an online business without investment.  It facilitates an innovative three-way marketplace enabling resellers, small and medium businesses (SMBs), and micro-entrepreneurs across India to connect with potential buyers using social media.