Digital Wholesaler MaxWholesale Bags $3 Mn To Expand Kirana Network

B2B ecommerce platform for kirana stores, MaxWholesale, has raised $3 Mn in Series A funding round led by Indian Angel Network (IAN) Fund I and Abu Dhabi-based private family office Al Falaj Investment Company (AFI).

MaxWholesale’s existing investor Maple Capital also participated in the funding round, along with Infoedge’s former CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi, Maple Capital’s Abhinav Grover and Biba Group’s Siddharth Bindra among others. The company has also announced that IAN’s Raman Roy and AFI’s Mohamad J Abdelghani have joined MaxWholesale’s board as directors.

MaxWholesale is planning to use this funding to hire talent, develop technology, accelerate growth and expand the network of kirana stores. Prior to this, the company has raised $1 Mn in Pre-Series A funding round led by IAN and Maple Capital Advisors.

“In the last year, we clocked 20X growth in terms of revenue. Going forward, we’re excited to use this investment to extend our capabilities and drive a bigger impact for FMCG chains and kirana stores through our technology-driven platform,” said Samarth Agrawal CEO and Founder of MaxWholesale.

Founded in April 2016 by Samarth Agrawal and Rohit Narang, MaxWholesale is a medium between neighbourhood kirana stores and the wholesalers or the FMCG companies. The B2B ecommerce platform allows kirana stores to restock the inventory for their stores.

Abdelghani, director of business development at Al Falaj Investment Company, said “We believe MaxWholesale is solving a major problem of FMCG supply chain and kirana stores in India. It is a fragmented and cluttered industry that needs an infusion of technology. Max Wholesale has brought a dynamic change in the way these businesses operate.”

MaxWholesale also manages several warehouses in Delhi NCR region and has a delivery fleet of 60 vehicles in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad. This allows the company to maintain its own inventory and deliver the order the next day, without delays. The company has partnered with 150 FMCG companies so far to source the products.

Besides this, MaxWholesale has also developed its own unified payments interface (UPI) gateway, MaxPay, to cater to the payment needs of its customers. MaxWholesale is looking to open its kirana store ecosystem to non-banking financing companies’ (NBFC) lenders. The company wants to facilitate capital generation and working capital loans for the kirana stores.

With approximately 10 Mn kirana stores in India, these small stores have become one of the major requirements for ecommerce companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Grofers, BigBasket and others. The ecommerce companies have been getting more and more small stores on board to act as delivery and pick-up points for an order.