Kirana Retail Chain GULLY NETWORK Raises INR 5 Cr from Orios Venture Partners

Gully Network Retail, India's first tech-enabled chain of small-format kirana stores, announced the closure of its seed round of INR 5 crore from Orios Venture Partners, India’s leading seed-stage venture capital fund. Having started in August 2019, Gully Network brings a unique tech-enabled platform that transforms a small-format business into an omnichannel modern store making the store’s experience as well as business model more competitive.

Gully Network has been founded by Ajay Nain and Prateek Chaturvedi, alumni of IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad, with a vision of organizing the unorganized offline retail stores which comprise nearly 95% of the grocery retail category today, despite the presence of large format stores like MORE, Spencer’s and Big Bazaar as well as online grocery brands that have come up in the past few years largely in the metros.



Small format Kirana stores number close to 15million in the country and suffer from issues of uniformly modern customer experience, lack of data-based reordering, static margins, rising costs of wages and rent and being offline, are unable to take advantage of discoverability on online delivery players by consumers preferring that channel. Under Gully Network, these stores will be able to address all these issues and thus, behave like a large and modern chain of stores. Gully Network currently operates in Bengaluru and has 25 stores in its chain and aims to have one store in every one kilometre radius across the country.

Commenting on the fund-raise, Ajay Nain, Founder, Gully Network Retail said, “In the last few years, the Indian grocery retail ecosystem has witnessed new solutions, such as B2B supply, POS, and Finance. However, there is none to solve 360-degree pain points of retailers and their hyperlocal consumers. Retailers still waste hours comparing prices on B2B apps and following up with traditional distributors. On top of this, they have to manage day to day operations and handle customers. We take care of Sales, Margins, Finance, Inventory, Merchandise and Additional Income for the retailers in our network. We ensure an increase in net income of retailers with no day to day hassles while enabling them, through technology, to behave like modern format stores end to end.”

“We are excited to partner in this journey with Anup Jain from Orios Venture Partners who brings in vast expertise and in-depth knowledge of the retail and FMCG sector. We look forward to a fruitful association here,” added Ajay Nain, Founder, Gully Network Retail.

Commenting on the fundraise, Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners said, “ Indian grocery retail market is approx 70% of total retail market in India today- a staggering $500+ Bn p.a.. However, we have seen little transformation on ground in the 15 million small format kirana stores which comprise over 90% of this market even today. We are excited to invest in the strong team @Gully Network Retail which has the potential to lead this transformation through technology and form the largest chain of modern format small stores in India”

About Gully Network Retail:

Gully Network Retail, India's first tech-enabled chain of small format omnichannel stores. Founded in August 2019, the company provides a unique tech-enabled platform that takes care of the entire value chain for retailers and helps them generate additional income while modernising their store end to end. They offer the best of both worlds to their consumers; attractive everyday prices and a seamless shopping experience of online platforms and the readiness of offline neighbourhood stores.

Launched in 2013, Orios Venture Partners is one of India’s leading seed-stage Venture Capital funds which primarily invests in India-focused consumer tech and non-tech startups and businesses. Each investment is backed with continuous support in strategy, operations, marketing and fundraising to help them breakout cost-effectively and build loyal customers. Notable portfolio companies include Pharmeasy,GoMechanic, Country Delight, Beato, Moneyonclick amongst others.

Medical Device Startup BeatO Raises ₹ 11.75 Cr from Orios Venture Partners, others

BeatO, the Delhi based health-tech start up, today announced the closure of its Pre-Series A round of ₹ 11.75 Crores (~US $1.714 million). Orios Venture Partners led the funding round with participation from existing investors -Blume Ventures, Leo Capital and Vishal Sampat. 

BeatO
focuses on meeting the end to end needs of a person with diabetes. As
is commonly known, a diabetes management program requires regular
exercise, controlled diet, medicines and diagnostics and regular
monitoring of blood sugar. BeatO helps a diabetic self-manage these
activities by providing a full-stack of services and products on a web
and app ecosystem. The consumer starts to use BeatO by purchasing their
smartphone -based glucometer that connects with the mobile app.

The
BeatO Glucometer connects to the user’s smartphone and works with the
feature rich BeatO app. The product and its concept is superior to
normal glucometers in the market. The glucometer along with the app
helps you keep a record of all your readings in an organized manner and
connects you to doctors and diabetes educators instantly to get guidance
real time in case readings go out of the desired range. Based on the
sugar readings, it provides instant alerts to family and caregivers too,
and, also predicts HbA1c that is used globally to monitor blood sugar
effectively. Once signed up, the user can order home delivery of
medicines and diagnostics and BeatO’s range of specialty diabetes
friendly food and drinks such as snacks, breakfast cereals, teas, juices
and vinegars. Not just these, one can also buy diabetic footwear and a
range of recently launched Ayurveda products. The app also has a section
of rich video and written content in English and Hindi, comprising
doctor tips, recipes and yoga workshops that simplify diabetes
management.

The company will utilize the funds to increase its user base and revenue, which have grown 10 X over the last 12 months and expand the product line for its flagship glucometer and FMCG/retail categories. The team will also be investing in R&D, platform upgradation for auto-suggestions basis blood sugar readings and product development in order to come up with new and innovative products and services for its ecosystem, which will enable consumers to manage diabetes in a better way. 

Speaking about the recent fund raise, Gautam Chopra, Co-founder, BeatO stated, “We
are thrilled to have Orios Venture Partners onboard our journey. As a
company we are on a mission to scale up a credible full stack
tech-enabled ecosystem for those with diabetes and, help them meet all
of their specific needs to lead a healthy life. With increase in the
disposable income in the Indian middle-class, we foresee an increase in
the discretionary spends. For a diabetic, we expect this to be
channelled into personal management solutions and more consumption of
customized food and retail products.” 

Commenting on the fundraise, Anup Jain, Managing Partner at Orios Venture Partners said, “Orios
believes in investing behind strong founders that create disruption in
large markets. Diabetic population in the country has touched 80 Million
and is growing at +6% CAGR. A diabetic consumer spends more than $1000
across different aspects of their medical care and lifestyle in a year.
This is currently a broken experience with
multiple suppliers that don’t talk to each other or to the user on a
common platform. BeatO provides the one place where diabetes can be
monitored and managed with the greatest convenience by the user and his
caregivers, that is necessary in today’s fast paced life. In Gautam and
Yash, we found mission-driven entrepreneurs who were looking to solve
this massive problem. Being close to the problem, their understanding of
the pain points and motivation for solving this ailment is very deep.
As a business model, it is obvious the audience is sticky and the
lifetime value / one time acquisition cost is extremely attractive.” 

Arpit Agarwal, Principal, Blume Ventures said, “Lifestyle
diseases are fast becoming an epidemic in India. Managing diabetes
alone is now big enough a market for large businesses to be built.
Hence, we continue to feel excited about the path BeatO is taking.
Through this journey working closely with the founders for more than a
year, we have found them forward looking, imaginative and highly
focused. They have managed to create a very sticky user base with very
limited capital. With Orios' experience in helping build some of India's
top consumer brands, we look forward to accelerating BeatO's quest
towards pre-eminence in Healthcare in India.”  

Founded
in end of 2015 by Gautam Chopra and Yash Sehgal, BeatO currently serves
50,000 diabetic customers in more than 1,500 cities and is currently
fulfilling over 15,000 transactions a month. It had previously raised a
seed fund from Blume Ventures and Leo Capital in 2017. 

BeatO
is a full stack platform where all needs of a person with diabetes are
met under one roof. BeatO was started by Gautam Chopra and Yash Sehgal
in Sep 2015 with the vision to help diabetics make the right choices and
manage their lifestyles with convenience and confidence.  At the heart
of their business is the Smartphone Glucometer that plugs the consumer
into BeatO's app ecosystem. It not only helps measure and monitor blood
glucose over time, it also opens up to a world of made-for-diabetics
FMCG products for breakfast, snacks, specialty food, and a whole
marketplace of doctors, educators, diagnostics, medicines refills and
insurance products. 

Blume Ventures is a seed and pre-series A venture fund that backs technology startups with both funding as well as active mentoring and support. Blume has been the most active venture fund in India since 2011, investing in sectors such as deep tech, financial services, healthcare, and education among others. Its current portfolio includes companies such as Grey Orange Robotics, Unacademy, Servify, Tricog Health, Locus and many more.

Chennai-based Inthree Access Raises $4 Mn in Funding from Ventureast, Orios Venture and IAN Fund

Chennai-based Inthree Access, a rural area-focussed marketing, retailing and distribution firm, has raised $4 million in a Series A funding led by Ventureast, which also saw participation from Orios Venture Partners and the IAN Fund.

The startup will use the freshly raised capital to strengthen its technology backbone, enhance capabilities in last mile logistics and deepen its penetration in the 10 states where it operates.

Founded in 2013, by Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan, Inthree is an mpact venture that focuses on achieving the triple goals of rural distribution, rural project implementation and rural consultancy by offering last mile distribution and expertise in working in rural markets. Inthree claims to be the safest bet to reach the farthest towns and villages in the hinterland and is a great channel to distribute products and services of immense social value to lower income groups.

Inthree also operate an e-commerce venture exclusively for rural areas called Boonbox. In September last year, Boonbox raised an undisclosed amount in pre series A round from a group of investors including Keiretsu Forum and existing investors Indian Angel Network.

Through Boobox, the company claims to have sold more than 1.5 million durable goods to more than one million households.

In a statement a business daily, co-Founders Ramanathan, Karthik and Narayanan said, "Inthree has always focused on providing the most appropriate products, backed by home delivery (irrespective of distance) and top class after-sales service. We are delighted to be funded by some of the best names in the industry and plan to utilize the funds to increase scale and strengthen our backend capabilities to delight our customers."

Rohan Dedhia, Assistant Vice President, Orios Venture says, “Boonbox is building a technology enabled commerce platform for Bharat, the next 500mn consumers in India, that hail from the smallest towns and villages in India. The company has a vision to own this ecosystem: sales, financing, logistics and service, that is currently missing in these regions. We believe that, just like in other areas like content, technology enabled commerce in India will be driven by models made for vernacular speakers. The company's growth so far, is a testament to this."

Last month, Orios Venture Partners had also participated in the funding round of Jaipur-based B2B wholesale e-commerce venture Wholesalebox.

About Ventureast, it is a two-decade-old firm investing since 1997 and has about $325 million in assets under management. The investment firm, touted as one of India's longest standing venture capital firms, has made more than 100 investments so far. It had also invested in Little Eye Labs, a tool for app developers which was later got acquired by Facebook.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - R. Ramanathan, Founder, Inthree Access | Via - Indianonlineseller.com]

Chennai-based Inthree Access Raises $4 Mn in Funding from Ventureast, Orios Venture and IAN Fund

Chennai-based Inthree Access, a rural area-focussed marketing, retailing and distribution firm, has raised $4 million in a Series A funding led by Ventureast, which also saw participation from Orios Venture Partners and the IAN Fund.

The startup will use the freshly raised capital to strengthen its technology backbone, enhance capabilities in last mile logistics and deepen its penetration in the 10 states where it operates.

Founded in 2013, by Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan and Narayanan, Inthree is an mpact venture that focuses on achieving the triple goals of rural distribution, rural project implementation and rural consultancy by offering last mile distribution and expertise in working in rural markets. Inthree claims to be the safest bet to reach the farthest towns and villages in the hinterland and is a great channel to distribute products and services of immense social value to lower income groups.

Inthree also operate an e-commerce venture exclusively for rural areas called Boonbox. In September last year, Boonbox raised an undisclosed amount in pre series A round from a group of investors including Keiretsu Forum and existing investors Indian Angel Network.

Through Boobox, the company claims to have sold more than 1.5 million durable goods to more than one million households.

In a statement a business daily, co-Founders Ramanathan, Karthik and Narayanan said, "Inthree has always focused on providing the most appropriate products, backed by home delivery (irrespective of distance) and top class after-sales service. We are delighted to be funded by some of the best names in the industry and plan to utilize the funds to increase scale and strengthen our backend capabilities to delight our customers."

Rohan Dedhia, Assistant Vice President, Orios Venture says, “Boonbox is building a technology enabled commerce platform for Bharat, the next 500mn consumers in India, that hail from the smallest towns and villages in India. The company has a vision to own this ecosystem: sales, financing, logistics and service, that is currently missing in these regions. We believe that, just like in other areas like content, technology enabled commerce in India will be driven by models made for vernacular speakers. The company's growth so far, is a testament to this."

Last month, Orios Venture Partners had also participated in the funding round of Jaipur-based B2B wholesale e-commerce venture Wholesalebox.

About Ventureast, it is a two-decade-old firm investing since 1997 and has about $325 million in assets under management. The investment firm, touted as one of India's longest standing venture capital firms, has made more than 100 investments so far. It had also invested in Little Eye Labs, a tool for app developers which was later got acquired by Facebook.

Source - Economic Times

[Top Image - R. Ramanathan, Founder, Inthree Access | Via - Indianonlineseller.com]

DocSuggest becomes Ziffi.com, raises Rs 15 crore from Orios Venture Partners

Yesterday, DocSuggest officially announced that the online doctor search portal is now transforming into Ziffi.com. With new brand and domain name DocSuggest is expanding from doctor search and appointment service to a comprehensive health and personal care search and appointments service.

Notably, the Mumbai based startup has also raised Rs 15 crore in series A funding from Orios Venture Partners. Docsuggest will use the funding to expand its coverage in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore & Hyderabad and strengthen technology interface, enhance design and initiate an aggressive marketing and brand building campaign

Curretly, Docsuggest is used to be an online booking engine for doctors appointments and beauty salons.

In DocSuggest official blog, it is stated - "After 5 years, 15000 doctors, 2.5Lakhs appointments, over a Million users and many mistakes later, we are even more optimistic, hungry and revving to achieve bigger and faster. DocSuggest is expanding from doctor search and appointment service to a comprehensive health and personal care search and appointments service."

The Mumbai-based venture was founded in 2010 by IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur alumni Shantanu Jha, Keerthi Kiran Chennupati, Pushkar Soni and Anshuman Pandey.

Ziffi currently claims to have 1.2 million users and is adding 7,000-10,000 new users every month. The service is free for patients and it charges a fixed amount to the service provider for each appointment booked.

[caption id="attachment_95062" align="aligncenter" width="700"] New Ziffi.com Website[/caption]

Ziffi will compete with several vertical focused players which have also attracted investor interest. Healthcare appointments platform Practo Technologies, which has already got Rs 25 crore backing from Sequoia, is expected to raise about $20 million in fresh funding this year. Another competitor is HelpingDoc which raised Rs 10 crore Singapore's Senior Marketing Systems (SMS) in August followed by Lybrate, which got Rs 7-8 crore from Nexus Venture Partners. Another one is new entrant PathDoor, which also lets you compare and book diagnostic lab tests in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi at a discounted price.

DocSuggest provides real time, accurate and detailed analysis about healthcare services including doctors' profiles, schedule, specialties, rating, reviews by previous patients, etc about available options enabling users to make an informed decision.

After selection of a preferred healthcare facility, the user can book a real-time appointment with the healthcare facility of his/her choice.

After transforming into Ziffi.com completely, the portal along with current services of doctor search and appointment service, will also provide comprehensive health and personal care search and appointments services.