Online Office Supplies Platform Aahaa Stores Raises $2M from UAE’s Calega

Aahaa Stores, an integrated procurement services provider for indirect supplies to large Corporates in India, has raised about $2M in its third round of funding from a UAE-based global investment Group Calega.

Founded in early 2013 by industry veteran Asokan Sattanathan and B-School alumni, Rajaraman Sundaresan and Shri Harish Kannan, Aahaa Stores plans to utilize the fresh investments to upgrade their technology, expand business across new verticals and geographies, enrich infrastructure by inducting more independent service providers and mobilizing superior talent. Before this round the company raised capital funds twice, $1 million each from a group of investors led by YourNest.

Asokan Sattanathan, Founder and Chairman, Aahaa Stores, said “Using these funds, we plan to expand the full range of curated assortment of products across all major brands in Stationery, Printed materials, Housekeeping, Electronics & IT, Food & Beverage, Packaging and Company specific consumables.”   

“We were looking at investing in India and narrowed down our choices to startups that use technology in a unique way to make life simpler for the business, industry and governments. Aahaa Stores aptly fits in our description with an innovative business model and a state of the art platform that makes purchasing for internal consumption a breezy affair. We should be able to assist Aahaa grow beyond the boundaries of India,” opines Sanjay Pahwa, Director at Calega.

Calega is currently evaluating various opportunities in the $1-5 million range & has identified Technology, Consumer & Med-Tech as areas of potential investment. Candle Partners were the exclusive financial advisors to Calega for the transaction.

Headquartered in Chennai, Aahaa Stores enables a one-stop solution for all business needs pertaining to office management, which are classified as indirect spends. Aahaa delivers products to over 4500 pincode destinations from 11 operational locations across India.

As an online procurement service partner, Aahaa stores helps businesses save on indirect purchases spend by managing their supply chain, bringing collective bargaining benefits and streamlining the vendor network. Aahaa stores is serving top notch clients including IndusInd bank, Tata AIG, TCS, Wipro, Reliance Nippon, ITC Hotels, Oyo, Uber, Yes Bank, Equitas, Ashok Leyland, Bosch, Eicher, RBL, HDB Financial, Syntel, HGS, Kone, Tata Capital and WPP Group. The indirect purchase spend of ET 500 companies in India alone is estimated to be over $ 24 billion.

Aahaa’s proprietary iPOS platform is designed to integrate all steps of evolved supply chain processes like demand aggregation, online approvals, e-Catalogue, recommendation engine, micro logistics through auto-assignments, real-time analytics and spend control tools. It has helped many corporates of repute rejig their brand through mobilizing rich and attractive merchandise in their Brand Stores and taking end to end responsibility from sourcing to last mile delivery. 

B2B marketplaces like Moglix and IndustryBuying are also operating in this segment. In April 2018, IndustryBuying had raised $2 million in venture debt from Blacksoil Capital. And in July 2017, Moglix had closed its Series B round of funding at $12 million from International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group and Rocketship.vc, along with Moglix’s existing investors.