With An Eye On Expansion, MilkBasket Raises $10.5 Mn Led By Unilever Ventures

Gurugram-headquartered hyperlocal delivery startup Milkbasket has raised $10.5 Mn in a fresh funding round. The investment was led by Unilever Ventures with participation from Mayfield India, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and a few Indian family offices.

The company said that the funds will help it focus on hiring, geographical expansion and customer-centric innovation. Prior to this round, Milkbasket has raised nearly $18 Mn from Sachin Bansal-led BAC Acquisitions, Mayfield Advisors, Beenext, Kalaari Capital, Unilever Ventures, Lenovo and Blume Ventures.

Founded in 2015 by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket fulfills the daily grocery needs of a household with deliveries starting at 7:00 a.m. The company claims to serve 100K households. It claims that 70% of Milkbasket revenue comes from non-milk products, which are serviced by 8,500 SKUs.

The company expanded its services to four more cities over the last few months and claims to grow 20% M-o-M. The company says that it has achieved positive unit economics in its first six months of operations and continues to grow rapidly.

Earlier in March, Milkbasket acquired Noida-based grocery delivery startup Veggie India for an undisclosed amount. All Veggie India employees along with the cofounders Jainendra Upadhyay and Shailendra Upadhyay have joined Milkbasket as part of this deal.

Anant Goel, cofounder and CEO of Milkbasket had then said that the acquisition is in line with its growth plans for 2019 and will add further strength and distribution capabilities to its existing business.

Hyperlocal Grocery Delivery

With the increasing access to smartphones and trust on online services, the hyperlocal segment has grown exponentially over the last few years. As a glitch in 2015-16, popularly known as Hyperlocal Bubble, several startup saw their end or a pivot for survival.

Among those who survived were UrbanClap, Grofers, BigBasket and others. The grocery segment has grown exponentially since then with investors ready to put in investments with an eye on profits in future.

Here’s what Milkbasket’s competitors are doing:

• Flipkart Supermart, Walmart-Flipkart’s online grocery arm, went live in Mumbai after being operational  in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi.
• Bengaluru-based Daily Ninja raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Matrix Partners India in September 2018
• BigBasket closed its $150 Mn funding round with sizeable investments from Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba, South Korea’s Mirae Asset Global Investments and the UK government-backed CDC Group.
• Gurugram-based online grocery startup Grofers raised $200Mn in a Series F funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF) with participation from existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital as well as new investor KTB.

A Goldman Sachs report forecasted that the Indian online grocery market is set to reach $40 Mn (INR 270 Cr) by FY19, growing at a CAGR of 62% from 2016 to 2022.