e-commerce
Tiger Global infuses $100 million funding in ShopClues
MUMBAI: Online retailer ShopClues.com has raised over $100 million in a fresh round of funding led by global institutional investors Tiger Global as well as its existing investors Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.
ShopClues CEO and co-founder Sanjay Sethi said that the company has bought 100,000 sellers and 10 million products online until now and plans are afoot to bring 10 million sellers and one billion products on the online domain in the next three years.
“We will continue to build technologies and services to enable and empower retailers to participate in the e-commerce revolution that is happening in India. ShopClues levels the playing fields for SMBs to compete with other organized retailers both in the online and offline space,” added Sethi.
Tiger Global partner Lee Fixel said, “ShopClues has emerged as the leading marketplace of choice for the millions of small and local businesses seeking to reach mass consumers in India’s tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Sanjay, Radhika and the team have done a great job aggregating the country’s largest online catalog of regional and local brands and we are excited to partner with ShopClues as it expands its offerings.”
ShopClues co-founder Radhika Ghai Aggarwal feels that in Tiger Global, it has found a strategic partner who showed confidence in its capability to operate the country’s largest marketplace for the masses. Be it the million of small merchants wanting to sell online or the vast pool of shoppers in tier 2-3 towns looking for access to the products and categories that they never had before.
“The fact that another ace investor has been added to our list of institutional investors is a strong endorsement of our team, strategy and business performance,” she added.
ShopClues was founded in 2011 as India’s first fully managed marketplace, when all other players were inventory led models. Currently, ShopClues does 1.5 million transactions per month with 70 per cent of them coming from tier 2 and 3 cities and the platform empowers over 1 lakh SMBs which is the largest community of sellers in India in the online space.
Unlike other marketplaces, which tend to focus on mobile, electronics, computers and branded fashion, ShopClues focuses on unstructured categories, which contributes to two-third of its revenues.
e-commerce
Instamart and Duolingo launch street spell check campaign for Instaprint
Duo the owl fixes signboard typos across cities to showcase instant printing.
MUMBAI: If spelling mistakes had a sworn enemy, it might just be a bright green owl with a printer. Instamart has teamed up with language learning platform Duolingo for a quirky nationwide campaign that turns everyday spelling errors into a public spectacle while promoting its instant printing service, InstaPrint. The playful activation takes aim at the many misspelled shop boards and public signs scattered across Indian streets. From “saloons” that promise haircuts rather than drinks to menus and posters peppered with punctuation mishaps, the campaign sends Duolingo’s mascot Duo on a mission to restore linguistic order.
Armed with Instamart’s instant printing feature, Duo prints corrected versions of the mistakes on the spot and pastes them over the originals. The result is a series of humorous street interventions that have quickly begun circulating on social media.
Photos and videos of the grammar correcting owl have been widely shared online, with amused users reacting to the unexpected spell check patrol. One user joked, “Ab ayega na maza bhidu,” capturing the internet’s delight at the unusual campaign.
Behind the humour lies a practical message. The activation is designed to showcase the capabilities of Instaprint, Instamart’s printing service that allows users to print documents and posters almost instantly.
The company says the feature is meant for everyday needs such as printing resumes, visa documents or last minute posters without the usual scramble to locate a print shop.
Instamart introduced Instaprint in 2025 across select metropolitan cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. The service allows users to order printed materials directly through the platform, extending the quick commerce model beyond groceries and household essentials.
By combining Duolingo’s famously persistent owl with India’s street level spelling quirks, the campaign taps into the internet’s long running fascination with grammar mistakes while demonstrating a real world use case for instant printing.
After all, in a world full of typos, sometimes what you really need is a quick printer and a very determined language teacher.
