Zomato May Acquire Grofers for $750 Mn - Report

Gurugram-based food delivery and restaurant discovery platform Zomato is reportedly in talks to acquire online grocery firm Grofers in an all-stock deal, reported Economic Times, citing two people privy to the matter.

Japan's SoftBank Vision Fund, which is the largest shareholder in Grofers, may look to invest around $100-200 million in the merged entity, said the report. Notably, SoftBank is also an investor in Uber, and in February, Uber sold its India food delivery business UberEats to Zomato.

The development comes at time when Zomato launched 'Zomato Market' for delivery of essential products and announced a tie-up with Grofers to deliver essential items during the nationwide lockdown due to Coronavirus. Zomato launched 'Zomato Market' was launched around the country amid the lockdown.

Venture capital fund Sequoia Capital is a common investor in both Zomato and Grofers. Zomato is currently valued at around $3.2 billion, while Grofers is valued at around $750 million (around Rs 5,700 crore) post its last funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund in December.

In September last year, Grofers had announced to add 700 Kirana Stores onto its network and targeting $1 Billion in revenue by 2019-end.

If the deal materializes, it will be the second big acquisition made by Zomato which acquired the Indian operations of UberEats earlier this year to bolster its food-delivery offering in the domestic market.

In an event in December last year, Zomato Founder & CEO Deepinder Goyal had said that Zomato is looking to raise up to USD 600 million (around Rs 4,276 crore) by January this year.

Grofers -- Stoppage, Arrest of Riders during Janta Curfew Delay Order Delivery

Online grocery platform Grofers said many of its delivery persons were stopped and arrested on Sunday even as e-commerce firms were to be exempted during 'Janta Curfew' announced to combat the spread on coronavirus in the country.

The company said these developments had led to a delay in the delivery of almost 20,000 orders countrywide.

Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and the CEO of Grofers, said as per the directive of the central government, the company continued to provide essential goods to customers across the country on the day of Janta Curfew.

\"State Government and local administration are advised to exempt e-commerce operations (warehousing & logistics facilities and services), wholesaler, their vendors & third party delivery partners who are a part of the supply and logistics chain ecosystem, from any type of prohibitory orders etc," he added.

Dhindsa said that "due to some confusion regarding the services exempted", many of its delivery riders were stopped and arrested that led to a delay in the delivery of almost 20,000 orders countrywide.

"This does not only affect the morale of the delivery staff who are working selflessly to support people but is also causing inconvenience to many customers who are relying highly on our services," he said.

Dhindsa noted that in a few states including Maharashtra, Grofers is also facing forced shut down of warehouses.

"Our teams are working relentlessly to support people and managing deliveries to avoid any kind of panic among consumers and we request authorities to take measures to ensure that the process of essential items delivery remains smooth," he added.

Dhindsa said the company is abiding by the rules and ensuring the maintenance of proper hygiene and sanitation in its facilities and vehicles. PTI SR

E-Grocer Grofers Hires 5000 Employees to Cater Increasing Demand

Online grocery retailer Grofers has hired 5000 employees in its warehousing and front-end operations to cater growing demand, a top official said o Wednesday.

The online grocery startup is also planning to expand its footprints in the tier-II cities next year and will later evaluate whether the retailer will go into the territories of Jammu and Kashmir, the company official said.

"We are growing strong and have added 5,000 employees in the warehousing and front-end operations, ahead of our second Grand Orange Bag Days (GOBD) sale from August 10 to 18," Grofers founder Saurabh Kumar told PTI. They will mostly be engaged in 15 new warehouses and help increasing its delivery staff strength, he said.

"We are also planning to expand in the tier-II cities next year and then territories of Jammu and Kashmir will be evaluated," Kumar said.

Grofers hired around 400 women employees keeping the demand for GOBD, a customer acquisition strategy, in mind, he said adding the retailer has all-women warehouses in Bangalore and will have such storehouses soon in Gurgaon before extending it to Kolkata.

At present, the company has 45 warehouses to feed 16 cities across the country.

"During the first edition of the GOBD sale in January this year, the company had acquired 2.5 lakh new consumers to online grocery shopping. It sold 1.81 crore items worth Rs 207.5 crore," Kumar said.

He said the retailer is expecting to acquire 3 lakh new customers in the upcoming sale. Grofers was pursuing profitability by consolidating its operations and focusing on doubling its sales to Rs 5,000 crore in the fiscal 2019-20. PTI BSM BDC

Online Grocer Grofers Raises Fresh $200 Mn in Funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund

Indian online grocery startup, Grofers has raised $200 million in a fresh funding led by Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF), pushing the Gurgaon-based company’s valuation to almost $1 billion. Existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital along with new investor KTB also contributed in the funding round, reported Bloomberg.

The funding comes with just two months after, Japan's SVF had invested $60 million in Grofers funding in March, when Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital also contributed to that round.

With latest fund infusion, Grofers has raised a total of about $500 Mn in funding over 8 rounds, including this one. The company said it’s prioritizing profit given the sliver of market share served by online merchants.

Albinder Dhindsa, co-founder and CEO, Grofers, said in statement, "Grofers had a top line of $400 million and grew 8X in the last two years. Grofers would become India’s largest online grocer this quarter."

Grofers faces fierce competition from both local and global players in India's $600 billion e-grocery market. Last month, Alibaba-backed online grocer BigBasket raised $40 million from CDC Group, the UK government's development finance institution. This was followed by Rs 20 crore venture debt funding of MilkBasket, which came from Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal’s BAC Acquisitions. Milkbasket is an online grocery and milk delivery startup, which is also headquartered in Gurgaon.

Besides Bigbasket, Walmart-owned Flipkart, Amazon.com Inc. also compete with Grofers. Both Walmart and Amazon have been investing heavily in their Indian business. Last year, Alibaba led a $300 million investment in BigBasket, pushing its valuation to $950 million.

The share of India’s online grocery market in Asia currently stands at 0.05% and is expected to touch 0.6% by 2022, according to international research organisation IGD.

Some of the major companies that are currently working in the online grocery market in India are SoCoMo Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Grofers India Pvt. Ltd., Town Essentials Pvt Ltd., Nuvo Logistics Private Limited, MN&C Supply Links Retail Pvt Ltd., BigBasket India Pvt. Ltd., Aaram Shop Pvt. Ltd., Natures Basket Limited, Local Banya Pvt. Ltd., Supermarket Grocery Supplies Pvt. Ltd., Fiora Hypermarket Limited, Godrej Nature’s Basket Ltd., Ekstop Pvt. Ltd., MyGrahak Shopping Online Limited, Jiffstore Software Labs Pvt. Ltd., PepperTap Ltd., SRS E-Retail Limited, Reliance Retail Pvt. Ltd., ZopNow Retail Pvt. Ltd.

Grofers Raises $60 Mn from Softbank Vision Fund at Valuation of $425 Mn

Exactly a year after raising $62 million, in Series E funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group, online grocery delivery company Grofers has raised $60 million in fresh funding from SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF), reported Economic Times.

SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF) is a subsidiary of SoftBank that invests $100 million or more in growth stage leading companies.

Other investor - Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital  also contributed to the funding. According to the report, SoftBank invested $37.49 million in Grofers, Tiger Global pumped in $19.99 million, while Sequoia Capital injected $1.99 million in the startup.

As Grofers is banking on its FMCG private labels to drive its second phase of growth, the fresh infusion would help Grofers continue its expansion into the fast-moving consumer goods (FMGC) segment, said the report.

The latest round of funding has pushed the company's valuation to $425 million, according to estimates from business intelligence platform Paper.vc. The Series E round of last year gave the company a pre-money valuation of $238 million.

This was the first tranche of a larger $120-140 million Series F financing round that Grofers is looking for. 

Grofers has raised just over $300 million since its inception in 2013, according to its Crunchbase profile.

Grofers has been putting together a strategy to make cheaper consumer goods available to the masses. "There are logistics and storage costs involved in transporting goods from the manufacturers to the wholesaler and then to the retailer. All of that goes away in our case," founder Saurabh Kumar had told Economic Times earlier.

While Grofers is yet to attract new investors to conttribute the balance capital for Series F closure, SVF is expected to invest a further $40 million in the company.

According to regulatory filings made in Singapore, the renegotiated shareholders agreement for Grofers also caps Softbank’s maximum stake in the company to 49%. 

SVF, which has a total size of massive $100 billion, has made 54 investments. Its most recent investment was in this month when it invested whopping $1.5 billion in Beijing-based Chehaoduo, an online car trading platform that directly links individual car sellers and buyers.

Its Official, After 27 Months Grofers Raises Fresh $62 Mn Funding from SoftBank, Others

Just over a month after online grocer BigBasket raised $300 million funding from Alibaba, another homegrown online grocer Grofers has finally managed to raise $65 million (~ Rs.400 crore) in a fresh Series E funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group. The funding came after a long wait of 27 months. Grofers last raised $120 million from Softbank at a valuation of about $400 million in November 2015. Prior to that it had raised $10 million from Tiger Global.

Other investors such as Tiger Global and Apoletto Asia also participated in the funding round. With this, the total funding raised by the startup is now $226.5 million.

IndianWeb2 had reported last month that Grofers would raise $65 million to further boost the private label with its entry into segments such as home care.

The fund will be utilised by Grofers to further ramp up its private label products and enhance supply chain. A significant amount of investment will go towards building infrastructure and technology and efficient supply chain management to achieve deeper penetration in existing Grofers cities.

"This fresh round by our existing investors is a vote of confidence and trust in the turnaround at Grofers. We took some hard decisions to fix parts of the business that were not scaling well. Our efforts have clearly contributed in making sure we have a clear path to profitability as well as the largest market share in the online grocery segment; having grown four-fold in the last one year for monthly sales in excess of Rs.100 crore,” Albinder Dhindsa, Co-Founder and CEO, Grofers, said to a business daily.

The above development was first reported in Money Control.

Notably, Grofers runs three private label categories called Savemore, FreshBerry and Best Value. While Savemore is for home care items such as cleaners, soap, phenyl and towels, FreshBerry is for fruits and vegetable and Best Value for staples. The company currently gets about 30 percent of its sales, from its private label brands in the food category including Freshberry and Best Value.

Grofers currently clocks an average of 25,000 orders a day with an average order value of Rs.1400. With its major portion of the business coming from North India, it claims to have turned operationally profitable in Delhi NCR on a per-order basis.

The fresh funding has in fact prevented Grofer from nearly getting shut down its operations a few years ago after scaling down its business significantly. Grofers had earlier reported a whopping loss of Rs 225 crore and a revenue of Rs 14.3 crore in FY-2016 while its biggest competitor BigBasket, operated by Bengaluru-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd., revenue for same financial year had tripled to Rs 563 crore.

Moreover, in last one year, Grofers has explored sale talks with bigger rival BigBasket as well as Paytm, said a Live Mint report, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The Grofers funding will now heat up the already hot online grocery market in India, where investors across the globe especially China and Japan are showing keen interest. According to a report, the online grocery market in India is projected to grow at a CAGR of 55% during 2016 - 2021. Easy availability of a wide product range at one place and improving logistic services offered by companies are anticipated to fuel the country’s online grocery market over the next five years.

According to the Forrester’s the Indian Online Retail Market report, India is the fastest-growing online retail market in the world. As per the report, e-commerce sales in India will reach $64 billion by 2021, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.2%.

To recall, last November, it was reported that Reliance Jio, a wholly owned subsidiary of India’s biggest business conglomerate Reliance Industries, is also planning to make entry into India’s online grocery market.

Prior to that, Adani Wilmar, the company that markets ‘Fortune’ brand of food products in India, also announced its plans to enter the online grocery sales business with a new e-commerce portal and app called ‘Fortune Online’.

Flipkart too has launched its grocery delivery app called Supermart, as a pilot in Bengaluru, in November 2017.

Its Official, After 27 Months Grofers Raises Fresh $62 Mn Funding from SoftBank, Others

Just over a month after online grocer BigBasket raised $300 million funding from Alibaba, another homegrown online grocer Grofers has finally managed to raise $65 million (~ Rs.400 crore) in a fresh Series E funding round led by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group. The funding came after a long wait of 27 months. Grofers last raised $120 million from Softbank at a valuation of about $400 million in November 2015. Prior to that it had raised $10 million from Tiger Global.

Other investors such as Tiger Global and Apoletto Asia also participated in the funding round. With this, the total funding raised by the startup is now $226.5 million.

IndianWeb2 had reported last month that Grofers would raise $65 million to further boost the private label with its entry into segments such as home care.

The fund will be utilised by Grofers to further ramp up its private label products and enhance supply chain. A significant amount of investment will go towards building infrastructure and technology and efficient supply chain management to achieve deeper penetration in existing Grofers cities.

"This fresh round by our existing investors is a vote of confidence and trust in the turnaround at Grofers. We took some hard decisions to fix parts of the business that were not scaling well. Our efforts have clearly contributed in making sure we have a clear path to profitability as well as the largest market share in the online grocery segment; having grown four-fold in the last one year for monthly sales in excess of Rs.100 crore,” Albinder Dhindsa, Co-Founder and CEO, Grofers, said to a business daily.

The above development was first reported in Money Control.

Notably, Grofers runs three private label categories called Savemore, FreshBerry and Best Value. While Savemore is for home care items such as cleaners, soap, phenyl and towels, FreshBerry is for fruits and vegetable and Best Value for staples. The company currently gets about 30 percent of its sales, from its private label brands in the food category including Freshberry and Best Value.

Grofers currently clocks an average of 25,000 orders a day with an average order value of Rs.1400. With its major portion of the business coming from North India, it claims to have turned operationally profitable in Delhi NCR on a per-order basis.

The fresh funding has in fact prevented Grofer from nearly getting shut down its operations a few years ago after scaling down its business significantly. Grofers had earlier reported a whopping loss of Rs 225 crore and a revenue of Rs 14.3 crore in FY-2016 while its biggest competitor BigBasket, operated by Bengaluru-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd., revenue for same financial year had tripled to Rs 563 crore.

Moreover, in last one year, Grofers has explored sale talks with bigger rival BigBasket as well as Paytm, said a Live Mint report, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The Grofers funding will now heat up the already hot online grocery market in India, where investors across the globe especially China and Japan are showing keen interest. According to a report, the online grocery market in India is projected to grow at a CAGR of 55% during 2016 - 2021. Easy availability of a wide product range at one place and improving logistic services offered by companies are anticipated to fuel the country’s online grocery market over the next five years.

According to the Forrester’s the Indian Online Retail Market report, India is the fastest-growing online retail market in the world. As per the report, e-commerce sales in India will reach $64 billion by 2021, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.2%.

To recall, last November, it was reported that Reliance Jio, a wholly owned subsidiary of India’s biggest business conglomerate Reliance Industries, is also planning to make entry into India’s online grocery market.

Prior to that, Adani Wilmar, the company that markets ‘Fortune’ brand of food products in India, also announced its plans to enter the online grocery sales business with a new e-commerce portal and app called ‘Fortune Online’.

Flipkart too has launched its grocery delivery app called Supermart, as a pilot in Bengaluru, in November 2017.

Grofers May Raise $65 Mn Via Softbank, Tiger Global At 40% Less Valuation

Gurgaon headquartered online grocery startup Grofers is in talks to raise $60-65 million from existing investors Softbank and Tiger Global. The possible funding round could see the valuation of the Grofers drop by over 40%, reported LiveMint, citing two people aware of the development.

Grofers' early investor Sequoia Capital is not likely to participate in the upcoming round, said the report.

The startup last raised $120 million from Softbank at a valuation of about $400 million in November 2015. Prior to that it had raised $10 million from Tiger Global.

Grofers had earlier reported a whopping loss of Rs 225 crore and a revenue of Rs 14.3 crore in FY-2016 while its biggest competitor BigBasket, operated by Bengaluru-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd. BigBasket’s revenue for same financial year had tripled to Rs 563 crore.

If the said upcoming funding round happen then too it will raise doubts about whether Grofers can survive, at least for the next year or so.

Moreover, in last one year, Grofers has explored sale talks with bigger rival BigBasket as well as Paytm, said the Live Mint report, citing a third person familiar with the matter.

Nevertheless, the proposed funding round, if happens, will give funds hungry Grofers enough money to sustain atleast for couple of years. It is to be noted that since 2016, Grofers had shut its operations in several cities, changed its business model from hyperlocal to inventory-based and had put its focus on winning in Delhi-NCR area where it is headquartered in.

According to market intelligence provider Kalagato, BigBasket held about 35% market share in online groceries, closely followed by Grofers and Amazon at 31.5% and 31.2%, respectively by March 2017.

After experiencing a hard time in 2015-2016, the online grocery market in India was reported to be only $1 billion in sales in 2017. Many hyperlocal grocery delivery startup couldn't sustain the crunch occured since 2015 and then follows a chain-reaction where startups shut down their operations one by one, starting with Sequoia backed Peppertap and then GrocShop, LocalBanya, AskMeBazaar, Lazylad and Genie, among others, also shut down.

Notably, Grofers' biggest rival Bigbasket has recently raised $300 million from Alibaba.

Last November, it was reported that Reliance Jio, a wholly owned subsidiary of India’s biggest business conglomerate Reliance Industries, is also planning to make entry into India’s online grocery market.

Prior to that, Adani Wilmar, the company that markets ‘Fortune’ brand of food products in India, also announced its plans to enter the online grocery sales business with a new e-commerce portal and app called ‘Fortune Online’.

Flipkart too has launched its grocery delivery app called Supermart, as a pilot in Bengaluru, in November 2017.

Good News for Online Grocery Business As Order Value Rises 33% YoY

The good news in the online grocery business is that people are ordering more at a time. Between January and May, the average order value rose 33% year-on-year to Rs 1,024.4, says a study by Kalagato, an India focused data analytics firm.

Barely 5% of India’s Rs 20-lakh-crore grocery market today belongs to organized players which gives both offline and online grocers enough room to grow.



The online F&G delivery market alone is estimated to be around $600 million in India and is pegged to touch $5 billion by 2020 at a CAGR of 72%. This market has been largely dominated by three key players Amazon, BigBasket and Grofers.

Currently, the margins that online grocers make are around 13% on sales but the cost of delivery remains high at Rs 80 per order. So presumably these startups begin to break even on the cost of delivery @ Rs. 620 per order(average), as per Kalagato. Analysts believe that at the current scale of 10,000-20,000 orders a day, the inventory-led model seems to have a better margin profile.



Currently, Big Basket dominates the space in India with a presence across 25 cities and an estimated revenue run rate of an annualised $300 million or roughly Rs 2,000 crore.

Amazon has plans to invest around $500 million in the food retailing segment in India and there has been similar foreign direct investment proposals by BigBasket and Grofers also. Flipkart will be making an re-entry into the online grocery market during this quarter.

In 2016, India was the fifth largest market in Asia Pacific for online grocery retailing at US$135 million. The leading country was China, followed by Japan and South Korea. Despite the channel being relatively new in India, it was amongst the top five countries in Asia Pacific in 2016 in terms of growth.

As of now, the opportunity for organised grocery retailers is pegged at close to Rs 3.5 lakh crore based on demands assessed for urban metropolitan towns and cities with a population of more than one million.

Grofers India Reports Loss of Rs 225 Crore in FY-2016

Gurgaon headquartered and SoftBank-backed hyperlocal grocery startup Grofers, has reported a whopping loss of Rs 225 crore and a revenue of Rs 14.3 crore in the fiscal year 2016.

The financials of FY'16 are not comparable to FY'15 as Grofers India Pvt Limited is a new entity or company formed in June 2015. Before that Grofers.com was owned by Locodel Solutions Pvt Ltd, promoted by founder Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar. According to its filing with Registrar of Companies (RoC), Locodel transferred its entire business to Grofers India Pvt. Ltd following a share sale. Both the companies have common board of directors.

According to data sourced from business research platform Tofler, Locodel Solutions had filed its annual figures for FY'16 on RoC, where the company has posted a net loss of Rs 60.87 crore, 15 times more than Rs 3.9 crore in FY 15. Total expenses of the company surged to Rs 61.45 crore from Rs 4.77 crore, according to Tofler data, which says that the revenues fell by 32 per cent at Rs 58.34 lakh from Rs 86.38 lakh the previous year.

Notably, the company has so far raised about $200 million from SoftBank, Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital amongst other investors. It last raised $120 million of funding in November 2015.

In the year 2016, the company has spend close to Rs 236 crore to fuel its rapid expansion activity and customer acquisitions. However, the high cash burn led to the company getting into a consolidation mode and reduced its operations from 26 cities to 17 cities not mature enough to order grocery online.

It also carried out a massive restructuring of its business and laid off about 100 employees as a part of that. Last year was generally not a good year for online grocery, delivery and food portals wherein several companies like PepperTap, LocalBanya, Eatlo, Tinyowl among 20 more companies folding up.

Meanwhile, Grofers biggest competitor at present is Bengaluru-based BigBasket, operated by Bengaluru-based SuperMarket Grocery Supplies Pvt Ltd. BigBasket’s revenue for FY 16 , however, has tripled to Rs 563 crore. But the losses have also increased to Rs 277 crore from Rs 61 crore in FY 15. Going forward, Grofers is likely to face another major competitor Amazon Now, which is slowly and steadily expanding its operations.

Grofers Raises $120Mn In A Fresh Funding Round Led By Softbank

Gurgaon-based yperlocal delivery startup Grofers has announced that it has raised $120 million (about Rs 780 crore) in a fresh funding round led by Japan's SoftBank Corp.

Russian entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital also participated in the round, according to co-founder and chief executive Albinder Dhindsa. Apoletto Managers, a personal fund managed by DST Global's partners also participated in this new round, the third one this year for Grofers.

The recent round is likely to value the company slightly below $400 million.

Grofers, which is online delivery service that connects consumers with local stores, has raised $166.5 Million till date after 4 rounds of funding by Softbank, Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global.

According to sources, after the recent funding Grofers Softbank is expected to take 20-30% stake in the company.

In July, SoftBank announced that the firm will shut down its venture capital (VC) arm and avoid investing in early-stage firms.

In October 2014, SoftBank pledged to invest a total of $10 billion over a decade in India. Grofers is fifth investment of SoftBank in India over the past year after Snapdeal, Ola, Housing and budget hotel aggregation platform Oyo Rooms.

Grofers currently operates in 25 cities and gets about 30,000 orders in a day. The company lists all neighbourhood stores on its platform (from grocery shops to pharmacies), and employs a delivery crew of 4,000 people that is growing rapidly.

In April this year, Grofers has raised $35 million from existing investors Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital in its third round of funding and in the same month the company has acquired a Delhi-NCR based grocery delivery mobile app, My Green Box, for an undisclosed amount.

Founded in 2013 by IIT graduates Saurabh Kumar and Albinder Dhindsa, Grofers started delivering to end customers in November 2014.

Grofers Raises $10 Million In Funding Led By Tiger Global Management

Gurgaon-based on-demand delivery startup Grofers has raised $10 million (around Rs 62 crore) in series A round of venture capital funding led by investment firm Tiger Global Management with participation from existing investor Sequoia Capital India. Notably, we at IndianWeb2 have selected Grofers among Top 10 Gurgaon Startups in 2014.

The deal values the startup at $33 million around Rs 205 crore. Currently available in Delhi and Mumbai, the latest raised funds will be used to expand into more cities, with Bangalore first on the list. After Bangalore, it hopes to expand into other major cities soon, including Hyderabad, Chennai, and Kolkata.

Founded in 2013 by IIT graduates Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, Grofers wants to help local shops by not only providing them with a mobile platform for their inventory, but also facilitating on-demand delivery within 90 minutes.

Grofers claims to process 30,000 deliveries a month, with a fifth of those orders placed through its mobile apps.

"Local retailer penetration in India is very high and there are a lot SKUs (stock keeping units) available to customers in a small catchment area. We want to bring that SKU availability online," said Grofers co-founder Dhindsa.

Dhindsa, who earlier worked at Zomato, said he expects Grofers' orders to increase from 180 a day now to 3,000 by end of this year.

In just few weeks this is Tiger Global's 9th investment in an Indian startup, earlier to this just couple of days back Tiger Global made mass investment in 4 startups in one go and earlier to that invested whopping $10 million in Culture Machine Media Pvt., a Mumbai-based startup followed by investment of $4 million in News In Shorts, a Noida-based mobile app startup.

Tiger Global Makes Mass Investment In 4 Indian Startups

Tiger Global, one of the top investing VC body in India has invested in a host of startups in India which includes language learning platform CultureAlley, expense tracking app MoneyView, on-demand logistics startup Grofers and fashion discovery platform Roposo.

Tiger Global has invested in some eight Indian startups in recent weeks as it prepares to set up its new office in the country in Bengaluru, after shutting down in 2009, to be led by Flipkart's former CFO, Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

The average ticket size for the deal is likely to be around $4-5 million each.

The New-York based VC firm is led by Lee Fixel, 35, who swept into India earlier this month intends to deploy up to Rs 1,555 crore ($250 million) in India by March this year. A sizeable portion may be invested across 15-20 early-stage deals.

Earlier, just 10 days ago Tiger Global has invested US$4 million in News In Shorts, a Noida-based mobile app startup.

Additionally, in month of February only Mumbai-based startup Culture Machine Media Pvt. Ltd has raised a whopping $10 million from Tiger Global in its Series B funding round.

Notably, Tiger Global has played pivotal role in Flipkart success as it has invested close to $800 million across several rounds in Flipkart. Apart from the sheer size of his firm's investments in India - it has so far invested nearly $1.5 billion (Rs 9,300 crore) in Indian startups.

Tiger has also bought stake in taxi app Olacabs, online marketplace Shop-Clues and online property search platform CommonFloor.