Facebook-backed social commerce platform Meesho crossed a $2B valuation after its Series E funding round. The India-based startup raised $300M at a $2.1B valuation from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Prosus Ventures, Facebook, Shunwei Capital, Venture Highway, and Knollwood Investment.

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• Meesho's marketplace enables business individuals to sell their products through social platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Twitter. 
• Serving 13 million entrepreneurs and 45 million customers, Meeshoo shares the market with Reliance Industries, Amazon, Flipkart, Dealshare, Glowroad, Shop101, and Kiko TV.
• The company will invest the funds in seeking new talent for its technology, business, and product divisions, expanding its current 1500 employee base.
• Among the startup's backers since it was founded in 2015 are top-tier VCs such as Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital.

Alibaba and DST Global led a $750M funding round in Chinese grocery app Nice Tuan. Nice Tuan focuses on community grocery buying, which is when a neighborhood store buys products in bulk from an e-commerce platform and manages local distribution.

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• The new funds will be used to improve its supply chain and introduce new produce offerings.
• China's community grocery buying market is expected to grow to $193B by 2025.
• Nice Tuan competes against Chinese tech giants such as Tencent, JD.com, and Meituan.
• The app is available in 1,598 Chinese cities and counties. It facilitates 15 million orders per day.
• It has raised $1.3B since its inception in 2018.

This story first appeared in Inside E-Commerce. You can read the full issue here.

Series A funding tracker: Last week, 41 companies raised more than $850M in Series A funding.

• Zapp, an online delivery platform provider, raised over $92M.
• HYCU, a multi-cloud data management software company, specializing in data backup recovery as a service, raised $87M.
• Food delivery platform Laileme allows you to order low-cost fresh food from your phone. It raised $70M.
• Qihan Biotech focuses on genetic editing for xenotransplantation and raised $67M.
• Canadian car-buying platform developer Clutch Canada raised $60M last week.

Other companies that raised Series A funding:

Prepared by Inside.com/business     Data: Pitchbook

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