DealShare’s risky reset puts it head-to-head with retail heavyweights

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. BENGALURU : Once valued at over $1 billion, e-commerce firm DealShare is attempting to pivot from its business-to-business (B2B) roots to a consumer-facing model, betting on value retail anchored by private labels, aggressive pricing, and two-hour deliveries, chief executive Kamaldeep Singh told Mint. Venture capital firm Tiger Global-backed six-year-old startup plans to scale its retail operations beyond its core markets of Jaipur and Kolkata by investing significantly in building out its supply chain and distribution network in neighbouring cities, Singh said in an interview.

“Our approach for the next few months is to deepen our presence in our strong markets, strengthen supply chains, and densify distribution networks, and move to congruent cities in Rajasthan, West Bengal, and parts of Uttar Pradesh such as Kanpur, Allahabad, and Lucknow," Singh said. However, expansion is unlikely to be swift. DealShare is carefully unwinding its B2B operating muscle even as it builds a consumer-facing playbook from scratch, a transition that requires devising region-specific strategies to keep pace with constantly shifting consumer behaviour, according to Singh.

“All regions have different consumption patterns. Take North India, for example. With cities like Gurugram having gated communities, the density of other quick-commerce players is very high.

But this isn’t exactly the case with smaller cities like Jaipur and Lucknow, and that’s where the real opportunities are," Singh added. Over the past two years, DealShare has gone through multiple strategic pivots as it attempted to keep an unsustainable business model afloat. Around mid-2022, it shifted from social commerce to the B2B supply model,