Zovi raises $50 million to launch 'Little'

BANGALORE, INDIA: Zovi founders Manish Chopra and Satish Mani has raised $50 million and will launch Little, a diversification into the burgeoning Online to Offline (O2O) market.

Little will be ‘app only’ and targets to be India’s largest consumer lifestyle deals marketplace. The funding is led by Paytm along with a large new undisclosed investor and participation from existing investors SAIF Partners and Tiger Global Management.

Little will use the funds to build the largest merchant ecosystem in the country, hire senior level talent and build new technology to focus on the Indian O2O market expected to be worth USD 64 Billion by 2016.

Little is building the largest O2O supply side infrastructure and will offer 50,000+ live deals across 11 cities by March 2016. The company is currently 400 people strong with strengths in technology, product and operations and expects to build a 1000 person team by March 2016.

The ‘Little’ app aims to be both a discovery platform for lifestyle consumers and a significant sales channel for merchants. Little is on track to provide the largest supply of real-time hyper-local deals to customers across services like, restaurants, movies, hotels, salons, gyms, spas and other services while creating a hassle free, just in time platform for merchants to market their services.

With the close partnership with Paytm, India’s largest mobile wallet player, Little will power the deals platform on Paytm and enable seamless payments when a customer bags a deal.

Little has seen swift pickup amongst merchants and has already enrolled over 5,000 merchants in 11 cities across India. Little expects to hit a GMV run rate of $170 million, by March 2016.