Soptle Raises $1 Mn in Pre-Seed Funding Led By Kube VC and We Founder Circle

Soptle raises $1 million in pre-seed funding

Funding round led by Kube VC, We Founder Circle, Iceland Venture Studio (IVS)

Soptle, India's first SaaS-led B2B marketplace for FMCG manufacturers and retailers, today announced it has closed a $1 million pre-seed investment in its latest funding round. The round is led by Kube VC along with We Founder Circle. This round also saw participation from Iceland Venture Studio (IVS), Nyra Ventures and founders of Dunzo, Jar, Bijak, and Managing partner of Rocketship.vc. Existing investors – Kube VC and Dunzo founder Ankur Agarwal – are also participating in the funding round.

The pre-seed funding will power Soptle’s expansion of the retailer-network reach and manufacturing-partner footprint across India, with new product offerings and technology enhancement.

Pravas Chandragiri, Founder - Soptle

Soptle was founded in 2021 by Pravas Chandragiri, then a 19-year-old high school graduate, who decided to become an entrepreneur instead of joining college. Based on his own experience of working in a kirana store in Balasore, Odisha, Pravas started Soptle with the goal of empower the 8+ million regional FMCG manufacturers and retailers across India. The startup helps FMCG manufacturers better serve the existing supply chains by providing access to procurement, production, demand generation, distribution, cash collection, and reconciliation. By digitizing and incentivizing the FMCG manufacturer, Soptle has become a one-stop marketplace for the FMCG community.

According to Pravas Chandragiri, the 20-year-old CEO & Founder of Soptle, “When I started Soptle, my aim was to help the humble kirana store owner in small towns and cities. I never had any doubt about both the idea behind Soptle and India’s untapped potential. Our team has worked hard to make this idea grow, and the pre-seed round is a validation of our efforts. The pre-seed round is another step towards many new milestones. I am thankful to both the Soptle team and the investors for their partnership and passion.”

“Pravas, at such a young age, has created a business model that encapsulates our view on how technology can connect various manufacturers to improve the distribution while also building scalable, defensible and profitable business models. We are encouraged by the traction achieved for their manufacturers-led market linkage,” said Neeraj Tyagi, Founder, We Founder Circle.

According to Kube VC: “With this innovative, tech-led, manufacturer-centric and distribution-first model, Soptle has set out on a journey to create a next generation B2B commerce platform that increases value realization and income for manufactures. Soptle enables manufacturers better access to market and distribution of their product using Soptle’s tech infrastructure.”

Soptle closed two angel rounds in 2022. With the latest pre-seed round, the startup has cumulatively raised $1.4 million from Kube VC, We Founder Circle, Iceland Venture Studio, Nyra Ventures, and founders and CXOs of Dunzo, Jar, Bijak, Gati, Google, and All-Cargo Group.

About Soptle

Soptle is the brainchild of then-19-year-old, Pravas Chandragiri, who comes from the small town of Balasore in Odisha. After graduating from high school, Pravas decided to pursue entrepreneurship rather than take admission in a college.

Founded in 2021, the Gurugram-based Startup is India's first SaaS-led B2B FMCG commerce platform that enables FMCG manufacturers to digitize their workflow, day-to-day activities, conduct their existing business in a more efficient manner, and also increase sales to retailers in other geographies by enhancing their utilization capacity. Soptle's investors include founders and CXOs from Dunzo, Jar, Gati, Google, All-Cargo Group, and Kube VC, We Founder Circle, Iceland Venture Studio, and Nyra Ventures.

 

Soptle's Vision is to Make FMCG Distribution Equitable in India: Said The 20-Yr Old Founder

Indian FMCG commerce is a $500 billion industry that is growing at a rate of 10-12% CAGR. Yet across the 12 million Kirana store owners in India, the average sales are only $700 per month. Out of these 12 million Kirana shops across the country, 7-8 million retail stores remain underserved by the majority of consumer brands due to the high-cost structure of traditional distribution networks. Soptle, a manufacturer-centric startup that offers countrywide serviceability through its tech-enabled active S&D channel is solving this fundamental problem of the segment and helping the local manufacturers and distributors with geographic expansion at zero fixed cost.

It enables the FMCG manufacturers to increase their income by providing access to country-wide distributions at zero fixed cost, through our tech-enabled sales & distribution channel-cum-market linkages, which helps them to:

1. Geographically expand their sales,
2. Enhance their utilization capacity,
3. Scale up their business, and
4. Improve their net margins by 3–4x.

The brainchild of a 20-year-old entrepreneur, Pravas Chandragiri, Soptle is a SaaS platform and mobile application that enable manufacturers to better serve their existing supply chains by providing access to procurement, production, demand generation, distribution, cash collection, and reconciliation in one app. By digitizing and incentivizing the FMCG manufacturer, Soptle has become a one-stop marketplace for the FMCG community in a short span.

Pravas Chandragiri, who comes from the small town of Balasore, Odisha, founded Soptle in 2021 when he was just 19 yrs old. He studied in a government-run school in the area and actively participated in the family-run Kirana Stores and started taking business lessons from his father and uncle when he was only 12 yrs old. He realized a few major pain points of a Kirana store like limited assortment, low margin, zero bargaining power, and so on. The computer gifted by his father gave him exposure to the world of technology, entrepreneurship, and business. He started gaining interest in coding and programming while trying to find a solution to the traditional supply chain issue faced by many local retailers and manufacturers.

At the age of 17, in 2019 he completed schooling and moved to Bhubaneshwar, for IIT-JEE preparation where he attended only for a week and decided to start his entrepreneurial journey with a venture which primarily focused on connecting regional manufacturers to retailers. He was the youngest CEO of that networking platform known as RFT (Rural Future Technology) where he connected 1200 Kirana stores across 9 districts of Odisha and successfully introduced 20+ regional brands from India to them. It was a profitable venture with an annual turnover of Rs. 60 lakhs. He attended various entrepreneurship seminars across India and met several industry experts and successful entrepreneurs to validate his model. Fortunately, during this time, he met with a number of regional manufacturers as well and became aware of their challenges. He even met people like Pirojshaw Sarkari (Gati’s founder), Vaishnav Shetty (All Cargo Group’s founder), Ritesh Ghosal (Ex-CMO, Tata Croma) in those seminars who eventually became his mentors and team members.

With Soptle, Pravas is on a mission to empower and uplevel the lives of 8,000,000+ regional manufacturers and retailers in India. With his journey, he wants to inspire other young entrepreneurs of his age as well as people from small cities/ villages in India to dream big and remain committed to solving the problem they are passionate about.

Answering the question on Soptle's market competitors, Pravas says - "We've a unique distribution approach. We're building a completely new technology model in this space and do not have any direct competitors in India. After reaching a certain stage, a San Francisco-based B2B retail commerce platform, Faire.com could be our potential competitor."

Briefing about the future plans of Soptle, Pravas says, "We are planning to scale about 100x from here over the next one year, build onto our technology teams and grow our distribution network by 15-20x. Post that the next frontier is going global with our technology and playbook in place by 2024."

The startup has recently closed an angel investment of $300K from Kube VC along with Soonicorn LLP and the founders / CXOs of Dunzo, Gati, Fitso, Google, Unlu and All-Cargo Group.