Xpand, a platform of Last Mile Channel Enhancement (LMCE) has raised $1.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round, at a valuation of approximately $10 million. Announcing it, the company said it aims to utilize the funds to enhance the in-house tech capabilities and build a trained, tech-savvy, and efficient geo-local sales force.
Prime Securities Limited was the exclusive Investment Banker to this transaction.
The round was led by Akash Prakash (CEO, Amansa Capital) in his personal capacity along with other highly successful professionals and HNIs, including Madhu Jayakumar, Dipinder Sandhu and Shagun Khandelwal.
Xpand, a two-month operational startup, was conceived by Sanjay Kaul along with industry veterans Sanjay Panigrahi, Sankalp Potbahre, Pradeep Kaul and Nidhi Singh.
Xpand under LMCE is a B2B aggregator helping brands enhance their rural footprints. The newly incepted app aims to further revolutionize the rural markets across India by leveraging technology and data science, providing innovative solutions that facilitate end-to-end channel operations management.
Sanjay Kaul, Founder & CEO, LMCE, welcomed incoming investors and said, “With Xpand, we are connecting retailers and companies on a single platform to solve their last-mile challenges. Simultaneously, we would empower and enable traditional kiranas to leverage technology to streamline their operations and widen their portfolio. The raised funds will help us further our goal of “speed to scale” and give thrust to our tech endeavors."
Arun Shah, Managing Director, Prime Securities, said, “With their technology-driven approach, LMCE would predict consumer behavior and control the rural distribution channel.”
Nikhil Kaul, COO, LMCE said, “With Xpand we aim to reach to 16 states, 30K villages, and over 3 lakh+ retailers by 2023. It further plans to strengthen its hold in rural India by expanding to at least 18 percent of kirana stores and scaling up to 33% of the total potential by 2025. “
