V-Mart acquires LimeRoad

Fashion retailer V-Mart Retail has acquired e-commerce platform LimeRoad for a lump sum cash of around Rs 31.12 crore and it is further planning to invest Rs 150 crore to scale and achieve sustained profitability.

V-Mart will operate LimeRoad as an independent business unit, retaining its tech startup culture. V-Mart is an omni-retail store chain offering fashion apparel, footwear, home furnishings, general merchandise and kirana. The company serves its digital-first customers through its D2C omnichannel platform vmartretail.com.

Following the acquisition, LimeRoad founder Suchi Mukherjee will join V-Mart’s leadership team as CEO of LimeRoad and the omnichannel business, while Ankush Mehra, Co-founder of LimeRoad, will continue as the startup’s COO. The Gurgaon-based startup LimeRoad has clocked 1.7 crore shoppers and achieved a gross merchandise value of more than Rs 700 crore.

Lalit Agarwal, Managing Director of V-Mart Retail, said, “With this acquisition, we aim to not only acquire digital first millennials but build our omnichannel expertise.” Over the years, it raised close to $50 million from investors such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners India and Tiger Global Management.

V-Mart is looking for LimeRoad to fundamentally solve the trust and quality issues for its online customers and work with the former’s expertise to translate emerging trends into product depth. The emerging trends, together with LimeRoad’s community expertise, will transform V-Mart stores into rich local-experience centres, driving higher repeat footfall over time.