ePayLater Partners with Zipgrid to Facilitate Last-Mile Delivery of Essential Items

ePayLater, a renowned innovator in digital credit space, has partnered with Zipgrid, a technology-led service provider for housing communities to launch ZipMart to ensure seamless last-mile logistics of essential commodities. The initiative intends to help select residential societies with online ordering while ensuring contactless delivery necessary to curtail the pandemic. The service is now operational and available to all residential societies registered with Zipgrid in Mumbai and NCR.

ZipMart offers an assortment of edibles and other essential items available at ePayLater’s partnering stores. The collaborative commerce activities of ePayLater and Zipgrid allow consumers to place an order from the safe confines of their home while enabling digital payments to minimize the risk of contagion. A user of a Zipgrid-registered housing society/building can place grocery orders using ePayLater’s online portal integrated on the Zipgrid app, under the ZipMart tab. The service is available on both Android and iOS platforms. Once placed, the order will be delivered at the doorstep of the consumer by an executive while observing all social distancing norms mandated by the government. The partnership looks to ease the buying process for consumers without jeopardizing their health and safety amidst the lockdown. The joint endeavor not only facilitates an uninterrupted supply of essentials but also adheres to the government’s guidelines in ensuring contactless and doorstep delivery.

Talking about this development, Uday Somayajula, Co-Founder, ePayLater said, “As India grapples with COVID-19, it is necessary to deliver essentials to buyers at their homes. We are happy to associate with Zipgrid, and our collective aim is to ensure people remain indoors and order essentials from the safety and comfort of their homes. We have embarked on this collaboration to empower communities and contribute to the greater cause of curbing this contagion."

Commenting on the partnership, Jaydip Popat, Co-Founder, Zipgrid shared, “These are testing times and we wish to ease the process of lockdown-living for everyone, in our capacity. The partnership between ePayLater and Zipgrid is a bold step in that direction which utilizes our collective commerce offering to service a building as a whole while being able to provide a large assortment and guaranteed delivery"

Currently, ePayLater is used by around 50,000 small retailers and Kirana stores across 75+ cities in India. ePayLater has developed a front-end interface for third-parties that not only helps end-consumers to avail ‘contactless’ online ordering but also empowers the neighborhood Kirana stores with last-mile logistics. This comes amidst the 3-week extension of the nationwide lockdown, which began on March 25, 2020.

Founded in 2015 by Uday Somayajula, Akshat Saxena and Aurko Bhattacharya, ePayLater is a ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ payment solution through which customers can instantly get access to a credit limit to make faster online/offline purchases. It is the first of its kind Digital Credit card in the country. ePayLater extends credit limits to individuals both for personal consumption (end consumer) and for purchasing business supplies (in case of self-employed professionals). ePayLater provides state-of-the-art technology and analytics platform for the Indian retail industry with a focus on Kiranas.

ePayLater has partnered with some of the biggest names in the industry such as Metro Cash and Carry Future Retail, IRCTC to name a few and is continuously increasing its footprint across the FMCG sector.

ZipGrid is a PropTech company, backed by 1 Crowd & JLL Inc. (NYSE: JLL) that provides full-stack technology solutions for all societies and property owners. They are well equipped with technology solutions that make Financial & Compliance Management a breeze to handle for building associations and societies of all shapes and sizes. They have been managing 1000+ associations across Pan India. In a recent endeavour to provide stress-free solutions for societies, Zipgrid has equipped it’s leading partner “JLL” with an application that offers all kinds of benefits to both committee members and residents. The application is ISO 27001 certified and PII encrypted ensuring security and privacy across our services.

Zipgrid strives to address every need of society and association through its combination of technology and professional knowledge-based services so that the committee members and residents of the society are at peace from the hassles of society management.

Community Services Platform Zipgrid Raises $500K from JLL and 1Crowd

Leading international property consultancy JLL India today announced an investment into Zipgrid, India's fastest-growing technology and knowledge services provider in the community management space. This marks the closure of Zipgrid’s pre Series-A round of $500K. It is also JLL’s third investment by its JLL Technology Ventures platform, a dedicated vertical for making investments into real estate technology firms. The round saw active participation from Zipgrid's current investors represented by the 1Crowd platform.

"The asset management space is transitioning into a managed services model where technology is starting to play a major role,” says Anuj Nangpal, Head - JLL Technology Ventures. “We aim to partner with technology platforms with flexible architectures that can integrate with best-in-class technology tools. Zipgrid’s tech-enabled property and asset management platform offers a seamless experience for residents, society managements and the property managers. This platform is significantly more matured than any similar options on the market, and we are keen to implement this solution in residential and commercial complexes across the APAC region."

Over 35 million households reside in organized communities in the top 50 city clusters in India. This platform represents a market opportunity of over US$ 2 bn and is slated to grow aggressively as such households increase to over 100 mn by 2025. Zipgrid’s service model dovetails very favourably with the strict norms enforced by RERA and also addresses a market opportunity that will transcend beyond India into Asia Pacific with the support of the global JLL platform.

The investment will be used to fund upgrading and upscaling of existing technology and operations, and to deploy a range of collective commerce solutions for individual residents as well as residential communities. Zipgrid had earlier raised US$ 250K from 1Crowd that counts a number of C-level professionals as active members on its platform.

Zipgrid, founded in August 2013 by Kunal Gupta and Jaydip Popat, provides tech-driven services to hundreds of housing and commercial communities. Its platform comprises of a full suite of integrated tools and applications that promote:

• Highly efficient property management
• Community engagement
• Financial as well as legal compliance
• Accounting management
• Compliance management
• Builder-to-society transition services
• Vendor management
• Billing and payment solutions, and
• Records digitization.

Jaydip Popat, Co-founder - Zipgrid says, “We are delighted to partner JLL, a global real estate leader in Property and Asset management services. We intend to combine our technology and management solutions with JLL’s network and understanding of this space to improve living experiences in communities while bringing significant economic benefits to residents. We are also thankful to 1Crowd for their continued support and participation in this round. It is a significant vote of confidence for us.”

Natasha Kothari, Co-founder - 1Crowd says, "1Crowd's start-up ecosystem supports companies like Zipgrid that are using technology and knowledge to bring efficiency and convenience to all. Zipgrid is on a very strong growth trajectory and has made significant progress since the time we made our investment last year. In this heavily fragmented market, Zipgrid has managed to provide systemic efficiency to the housing and commercial communities."

Community Services Platform ZIPGRID Raises More Than USD 200,000 Funding From 1Crowd

Mumbai-based ZIPGRID, a unique community services platform that provides comprehensive technology-led services to housing and commercial communities, has raised more than USD 200,000 in equity financing from 1Crowd, an ecosystem for startups.

ZIPGRID, Co-Founded by Jaydip Popat (formerly with Firstsource Solutions) & Kunal Gupta (formerly with Mapletree Investments), has footprint in Mumbai and Ahmedabad, and currently serves over 70 housing communities. The range of services includes Accounting & Finance, Compliance & Control Management solutions. The core offering is driven by knowledge, technology, a robust process control framework and a centralized processing hub. ZIPGRID community solutions optimize costs, deliver convenience and combined with collective commerce solutions; delivers significant cost savings and value addition. ZIPGRID is now looking to expand its footprint and invest in strengthening technology and operations.

“72% of consuming households in India reside in top 49 urban agglomerations of India and 2/3rd of these households are part of organized housing communities. We are preparing ourselves to take on the immense untapped opportunity of collective consumption at the gates of these communities by creating value for all stakeholders involved. Partnering with 1Crowd has brought us a few steps closer to our mission,” said Mr. Kunal Gupta – Co-Founder, ZIPGRID

“ZIPGRID brings innovation, professionalism, organisation and efficiency using technology and knowledge to an orphaned sector otherwise plagued by apathy. Our philosophy at 1Crowd is to foster an ecosystem from incubation to success and invest in innovative start ups that seek to solve real problems bringing improvement, convenience, and efficiency to our daily lives. We are sector agnostic and work with both B2C and B2B start ups. ZIPGRID has greatly benefited from our wide investor base and our strategic engagement," said Natasha Kothari, co-founder of 1Crowd.

1Crowd is an ecosystem for start-ups providing investors opportunities to invest in Indian start-ups and early stage ventures that have been curated by a team of professionals with wide ranging experience. 1Crowd's differentiated model includes co-investment and engaging with portfolio companies in areas of organisation building, strategy and importantly in sales and marketing, making it a partner of choice for startups and investors alike.