Exclusive: Grofers Shuts Down Operations In 9 Cities

Gurgaon-based on-demand delivery startup, Grofers, has shut down operations in 9 cities – Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore, Kochi, Ludhiana, Mysuru, Nashik, Rajkot and Visakhapatnam.

The employees stationed in these cities have been offered positions in other cities.

In an exclusive conversation with Inc42, Kshitij Torka VP Marketing at Grofers confirmed the development and said, “We did not see these cities grow at the pace we expected, so we are investing in areas where we are seeing great uptake.”

Grofers in currently operational in 17 cities – Agra, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Delhi – NCR, Nagpur, Pune, Surat and Vadodara.

4 months back @Grofers expanded to 27 cities. It’s back to 17 cities now. Closed Bhubaneswar, Aurangabad, Bhopal, Kochi & others #startup

— Akhil Agrawal (@agrawalakhil) January 3, 2016

In October 2015, the company halted operations in certain parts of Delhi NCR due to operational issues after employees in Noida stopped working based on layoff speculations. The operations were resumed after a few days.

In November 2015, the company raised about $120 Mn (INR 780 Cr) in a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank Corp. The round also saw participation from its existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. Apoletto Managers, a personal fund managed by DST Global’s partners, also participated in this round.

This was the startup’s third round of funding, which had previously  raised $10 Mn (INR 62 Cr) in venture capital funding led by investment firm Tiger Global Management and existing backer Sequoia Capital India in February. In April, it grabbed another $35 Mn in a funding round led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital. At that time, it was doing more than a 1,000 orders every day.

Founded in 2013 by IIT graduates Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, the startup’s valuation has now risen from $33 Mn in February 2015 to more than $300 Mn after the latest round in November. The company has now raised more than $160 Mn in funding.

Recently, in December 2015, Varun Khurana resigned from his post as the company’s CTO. He spent less than a year with the company.

(Hat Tip: Aditya Upadhyay)