Dolma Impact Fund has made a significant investment on sastodeal.com, one of the biggest online shopping stores in Kathmandu.

Dolma, the first international private equity and impact fund in the country, highlighted Sastodeal.com’s exceptional business growth, up 233 percent in the last quarter, as the major reason for the investment.

Prajwal Tamrakar, public relations head at sastodeal, said that Dolma Impact Fund has been providing strategic, marketing and financial support to the company to boost business.

The private equity firm which has investments in different business sectors such as technology, hydropower, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and agriculture, believes that sastodeal will be able to expand its product categories, acquire talent, strengthen core operations, empower more vendors and cater to customers in most parts of the country with the fresh investment.

“In the beginning, most vendors and customers had little or no knowledge about online shopping. We and other collaborators from the industry have worked hard to educate the market about e-commerce, and as a result, online shopping is a trending culture in Nepal,” said Amun Thapa, founder of sastodeal.

“If Sastodeal can grow at 233 percent in the last quarter without us, imagine the future with Dolma’s capital and contacts,” said Shabda Gyawali, senior investment manager at Dolma.

As most of the urban population have busy schedules with little time to go shop in person, online shopping has been gaining popularity particularly among the growing middle income population.  Compared to retail, e-commerce still represents a fraction of the potential market. However, considering the growth of e-commerce platform in India and rest of the world, Nepal is also expected to see significant rise of online shoppers. Established in 2011, sastodeal has been offering 24,000 different types of products from 500 brands. According to the company, it has been providing express delivery in Kathmandu within two hours of order.

However, due to lack of government supervision in e-commerce sector, few e-commerce companies are spoiling the name of the good ones by delivering low quality products instead of what they showcased on their shopping portals. Sastodeal has millions of users, about 800,000 social media followers and partners with thousand of vendor.