Indore-based ShopKirana Raises $2Mn from Info Edge, Japan's AET Fund and Others

Indore-headquartered B2B e-commerce startup ShopKirana has raised $2 million in funding from Info Edge, along with Japan's AET Fund, Akatsuki and Incubate Fund and Better Capital AngelList syndicate.

Post this investment, Info Edge has now acquired 15.5 percent stake in Shopkirana, on a fully converted & diluted basis.

The funds raised will be used by the startup to expand its business operations across India as the startup is aiming to launch in ten cities by next year, targeting one lakh retailers and connecting farmers with retailers.

Prior to this fundraise, ShopKirana had raised an undisclosed amount in December 2016, which was its pre-series A round led by Lead Angels, Incubate fund and senior executives from top FMCG Companies. To date, Shopkirana has raised a total of $2.1 million in funding over four rounds.

Founded in 2015 by Deepak Dhanotiya, Sumit Ghorawat, Tanutejas Saraswat, Shopkirana is connecting brands & traditional brick-and-mortar retailers with the help of technology & supply chain innovation. ShopKirana aims to build biggest & fastest Go-To-Market platform for 90% of India's retail market which is unorganised and need to get transformed quickly.

According to Sumit Ghorawat, co-founder, ShopKirana, the startup has entered the growth phase and now plans to aggressively expand pan India.

"Unlike a lot of startups, we took inspiration from the McDonalds and the 7-Elevens of the world, where they did not open 100 stores on day 1. They operated one store initially, made the order taking streamlined, recipe standardized and then scaling became easy. Now, not just the leadership but my entire team is confident in scaling the business," he said.

Speaking on the investment, Kitty Agarwal, Head-Corporate Development, Info Edge, said, "We believe that the next frontier for internet businesses will be Bharat and not India. Shopkirana is servicing small retailers and empowering them to compete with organized retail and online players. The team is outstanding and has focused well on delivering the proof of concept with promising economics. They are addressing a large problem and we look forward to working with them closely."

Tomoya Ogawa, Managing Director of AET Fund (Akatsuki Entertainment Technology Fund) and CFO of Akatsuki, said, "We're thrilled to partner up with ShopKirana. We aim to realize the delightful lifestyle change of retailers by transferring our global expertise on entertainment including gamification."

Tokyo-based AET Fund is a venture capital fund specializing in the intersection of entertainment and technology. The fund actively invests in new forms of entertainment such as streaming services, voice assist, the gamification of existing industries and spreads beyond the bounds of conventional categories such as games, music, sports, beauty and fitness.

Traditional retail is still the bigger part of the market in India, and Ghorawat said that the company was targeting a 5% market share over the next five years, which would translate into sales of $3-5 billion.

Source - Economic Times, MoneyControl

Lead Angels Network Leads Pre-Series A Investment in Indore-Based ShopKirana

Lead Angels Network bets on local Indian innovation to inject technology in the Kirana business. ShopKirana has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-series A from Lead Angels, Incubate fund Japan and senior executives from top FMCG Companies.

ShopKirana is a B2B technology and supply chain focused company that aims to empower retailers to be competitive by providing technology, operational expertise and scale advantage. Idea is to partner with thousands of retailers (by becoming part of their supply chain) and making it the biggest and quickest go-to-market channel for products and services.

$300Bn Indian retail market is still largely (~92%) unorganized. ~9M small and fragmented retailers lack technology and are plagued with supply chain inefficiencies. ShopKirana is using M-commerce by integrating the existing unorganised supply chain cobweb into systematic hub and spoke franchise system using technology. It plans to tap the Kirana retail segment, 92% of which is unorganised. They are helping the retailers in keeping up with the changing retail space by providing them a one-stop solution for sourcing. They are using a digital platform for 24/7 ordering, 24hrs delivery and consolidated payments, with the help of which, they are able to quickly fulfill orders. Leveraging on their strong relationships with the retailers, they are also launching brands on their platform, which need a digital platform to launch and need data analytics to catch up the trends in the market. Through integrating retailers and brands on a platform, ShopKirana hopes to create India’s largest go-to-market channel via retailers.

“ShopKirana is working on sustainable value creation by simultaneously increasing efficiency in the supply chain and aggregating purchasing power of small businesses. I believe that the team has collectively exhaustive skill sets with a very firm focus on areas where startups seem to fail: execution and consistency in service quality.” says Pragnesh Podar, lead investor from Lead Angels group.

This model is retailer centric and will remain that way. ShopKirana will connect with 1+ lakh retailers in next 1-2 year, helping them to improve on sourcing and inventory turn over. It will help regional/domestic brands to go national while helping international brands reach smaller markets. It will also help established FMCG companies to get quicker reach to retailer and visibility of accurate and competitive POS data.

“We have already tested services in 2 cities with 5000+ Kirana stores, delivered 200+ orders /day and achieved sales of over Rs. 10+ lakh / day. We will reach 10,000+ customers and will be delivering 1000+ orders/day soon,” said ShopKirana co-founder Deepak Dhanotiya.