ShopClues & Droom Founder Sandeep Aggarwal bets big on international start-ups

Founder – ShopClues and Droom, Sandeep Aggarwal, is being aptly called one of India’s star serial entrepreneurs. He is firmly investing and funding as an angel investor for promising out-of-the-box ideas and disruptive start-up ventures that tackle real problems.
After recently closing a funding round with the mobile-first wholesale marketplace Wydr, Aggarwal has now invested an undisclosed amount in international start-ups such as Dekoruma.com – an Indonesian furniture and home décor marketplace.
Prior to Dekoruma.com, Aggarwal had made at least three more investments in international start-ups based out of Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia.
Dekoruma is a platform which is a shoppable magazine concept that brings beautiful products in home and living space, and ensure that it is accessible and affordable by everyone.
He is widely regarded as the father of marketplaces in the Indian Internet ecosystem – having founded ShopClues in 2011 – India’s first managed marketplace, which became the fifth unicorn in consumer Internet in India and Droom in 2014 – India’s first marketplace for automobiles.
With Aggarwal at its helm, Droom is now one of the fastest growing consumer Internet companies in India.
Speaking on his investments, Aggarwal said, “As someone who has built two Internet & mobile businesses from scratch, I understand the need for support and faith from entrepreneurs in the industry for the success of nascent ventures. We could scale both ShopClues and Droom thanks to the funding and guidance we received in our initial days. Now, I believe it is my turn to offer insights and learnings that I have acquired over the years to passionate, young entrepreneurs. I have been very impressed by the team at Dekoruma.com.”
He further added, “I always look for qualities such as zeal, enthusiasm and belief in one’s idea when investing in a business. Recently, I invested in Dekoruma because I instantly saw its game-changing potential in the Southeast Asia market.”
The prolific investor gives a lot of importance to tech-driven businesses and looks for attributes like his own– high energy, passion and long-term vision. He has already invested in Shopsity, Poolmyride (a cab-sharing start-up) and AYN Network (a B2B marketplace).
Aggarwal believes technology plays an extremely pivotal role in creating winning ventures, and supports founders who believe in frugality and economic effort to achieve success.