prime venture partners: Collaborative commerce platform Oyela raises Rs 14.4 crore led by Prime Venture Partners

The company said it will use the funds to develop ecommerce technology, build chatbots for selling on various platforms with public profiles like Pinterest, YouTube, Threads as well as streamline the supply chain to help people set up and expand their own Instagram stores.

Founded in 2021 by Rahul Gope and Anjan Kumar Patel, Oyela helps sellers to grow their business by offering tools to collaborate with each other for better traction on social media, streamline operations, and use Instagram automation to boost sales.

“We are thrilled to welcome Prime Venture Partners as our newest partner in this exciting journey. The new funds will allow us to further enhance our platform and help us achieve our dream of empowering 2 million social stores in the next five years,” said Rahul Gope, cofounder and CEO, Oyela.

“First value proposition that we offer to the sellers is getting more orders and utilising their own social media reach. Second is making them collaborate with relevant sellers to utilise their social media reach as well,” Gope told ET in an interaction.

Almost 60-70% of the sellers that use Oyela are women entrepreneurs, he added.

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Gope said the ecommerce technology will include order management, automated order collection which involves the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and native payment gateway integration.Last year, the company raised Rs 4.1 crore in funding from several investors including Good Capital, Upsparks Capital and Eximius Ventures.

Commenting on the investment, Amit Somani, managing partner, Prime Venture Partners said “The GenZ population are ecommerce natives and are also open to experimenting with fashion. Currently, there are more than 200 million businesses/sellers on Instagram globally. The next 10 years of ecommerce growth will have a meaningful contribution from these Gen Z sellers.”

Oyela not only offers solutions to solve problems of Instagram sellers but also opens new avenues for them to explore, he added.

Prime Venture partners has invested in companies such as Quizizz, MyGate, PlanetSpark, Dozee, NiYO, Sunstone Eduversity among others. It last invested in a Bangalore-based GenAI startup Zuapp in July this year.