Rozana Secures Rs 290 Crore to Expand Rural Retail Platform

Bengaluru: Rural commerce startup Rozana has raised Rs 290 crore in a Series B funding round led by Bertelsmann India Investments. The round also saw participation from Fireside Ventures, Spark Growth Ventures, Bikaji Family Office, FE Securities, and several other family offices.

The company plans to use the funds to expand its presence in more regions, increase product offerings, build private-label brands, and strengthen its technology and supply chain systems.

“For the last two and a half years we have been in the same villages just trying to test the depth of the market,” said co-founder Ankur Dahiya. “Now we would like to expand our geography to the Gangetic belt beyond where we are operating today.”

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Rozana currently serves over one million households across more than 21,000 villages in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. Its operations are supported by a network of over 35,000 local delivery entrepreneurs.

The startup focuses on gram panchayat-level markets, where organised retail and e-commerce penetration is still limited. “We started from gram panchayats and built the model from there,” Dahiya said.

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Customers can order through Rozana’s app or website, with deliveries handled by local partners or through 86 distribution centres that also function as retail stores.

“Today, across these 21,000 villages, we have around 35,000 active entrepreneurs who deliver products for us,” Dahiya said.

Rozana combines several village orders into a single delivery to improve logistics efficiency. “Our average order value is about Rs 584 right now but what matters more for us is the average order delivery value,” Dahiya said. “Normally this remains between Rs 2,500 and higher because we combine five or six orders and deliver them together,” he added.

The company also plans to expand its product catalogue beyond the current 2,300 SKUs. “In our opinion, 2,300 SKUs is still a very small number. This will have to grow to probably 15,000 SKUs if we want to serve all the categories that the consumer buys,” Dahiya said.