Online Grocery Wholesaler Jumbotail Raises $13 Mn In Series B Funding

Bengaluru-based online wholesale marketplace Jumbotail has raised $12.98 Mn (INR 90 Cr) in a Series B funding round led by San Francisco-based omni-stage venture fund Heron Rock. The round also saw participation from Capria Fund, BNK Ventures and William Jarvis and existing investors, Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital.

The funds will be used to invest in AI in supply chain. It will also use investments for forward integration of the Jumbotail platform with PoS, integrating backward to farmers, and onboarding new FMCG brands. Jumbotail is also looking to expand its team.

Prior to this round, the company has raised $10.5 Mn funding from Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners among others.

Founded in 2015 by S.Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina, Jumbotail offer mobile app for wholesalers to order widest selection of staples and FMCG products. The company says that the top FMCG brands and staple producers in the country work directly with Jumbotail.

Jumbotail aims to organise the food and grocery ecosystem using technology, data science, and design. The startup offers a wide selection of products including staples, spices, dry fruits, packaged foods, and FMCG products. Sellers (traders, manufacturers and brands) have an option to list their food, grocery and FMCG products on its marketplace.

Sameer Brij Verma, managing director, Nexus Venture Partners, said, “Jumbotail’s full-stack approach to modernise general trade via cutting edge tech driven supply chain, data-driven merchandising and credit is the most scalable way to revolutionise India’s grocery retail. The company is well positioned to power the online-to-offline new retail rollouts in the country in the coming years.”

The facilities offered by Jumbotail include fully integrated highly reliable supply chain network, last-mile storefront delivery service, payment and credit solutions to kirana store owners, and PoS integration with omni channel access.

Rajesh Raju, managing director, Kalaari Capital, said, “Food and grocery is a rapidly growing over $300 Bn market in India which will be serviced predominantly by the kirana stores for the foreseeable future. Creating value for millions of kirana stores, and their ecosystem of brands and consumers is one of the hardest problems to solve, and we believe Jumbotail has the right team to do this.”

The overall B2B market size is expected to grow to around $700 Bn by 2020, according to an April 2016 report by the Confederation of Indian Industry and Deloitte. Over the last few years, the B2B ecommerce has picked up pace with players such as Udaan. With players such as Jumbotail fighting for dominance in the wholesale grocery market, the technology upgrade on B2B side can be further leveraged.