Looks like on demand delivery services are gaining prominence in Indian ecommerce sector. Grofers, a hyper-local delivery service has raised $10 Mn (INR62Cr) in venture capital funding led by investment firm Tiger Global Management and existing backer Sequoia Capital India. This funding values the startup at $33Mn (INR 205 Cr).
News of Tiger Global investing in Grofers surfaced in media a few days back. Tiger Global recently has also invested in News In Shorts.
Grofers’ founder is planning to utilize the funds in upgrading the business and aims to increase the orders served by the company from 180 a day to 3,000 by end of this year.
Co-Founded by IIT graduates Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar in 2013, Grofers is an on-demand delivery startup that delivers items from nearby stores of the cities to the customer. The startup realizes that there is a need of such a platform to provide convenience and local shopping experience by connecting the consumers to the stores in their neighbourhood through an easy to use web and mobile platform. The company assures 90-minutes delivery of product.
Albinder Dhindsa, Co-founder Grofers, said, “Local retailer penetration in India is very high and there are a lot SKUs (stock keeping units) available to customers in a small catchment area. We want to bring that SKU availability online.”
Prior to this, Grofers had raised seed funding from Sequoia Capital. The other startups in this space, Delyver raised INR 6.5 Cr in November last year and Blowhorn raised an undisclosed closed amount of seed fund from Unitus seed Fund.
Lee Fixel, partner at Tiger Global said, “The company is well positioned to help local businesses benefit from the rapid adoption of smartphones and the emergence of the on-demand economy in India.”
