Gurugram-based online grocery retailer, Satvacart has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in its third angel round from serial entrepreneur Nimit Panigrahi. The firm had earlier announced the participation of Abhijit Avasthi (Sideways),Karan Chellani (Partner, Grace Capital Ventures), and SP Vijay (Founder, Tarento Technologies) at the beginning of this round in July 2016.
Talking about the utilisation of funds, Rahul Hari, Founder and CEO, Satvacart said: “With this funding, we plan to enhance our technology and data analytics capabilities to make the business ready for scale up and become self-sustainable, before replicating the business across other geographies. We will be hiring talent across technology, data analytics, and retail for our future expansion and are open to acqui-hiring as well as acquisitions.”
Nimit Panigrahi is a serial investor and entrepreneur. An alumnus of Cass Business School (London), he has extensive experience in business strategy, financial modeling, risk consultancy & mitigation and brand building. He has further ventured into building an exclusive and diversified portfolio of technology ventures which include – Thumbbell – a health & fitness marketplace; Lolchef – a food delivery app; and FiFi – an artificial intelligent fitness app.
Commenting on his decision to invest in the online grocery sector, investor Nimit Panigrahi said, “I have studied the business models of some of the globally successful egrocery players such as Ocado and Fresh Direct. The problem is not in the sector but with the business model. I see a huge opportunity in this sector primarily because the entry barriers have now been set. Given the recent shutdowns, it will be extremely difficult for any new player to enter into egrocery or secure funding. Any future scale-up will happen among the existing players only, who have a sound and sustainable business model. And this is where the value creation opportunity lies.”
Backed by Palaash Ventures, Satvacart was launched in January 2015 by Rahul Hari. As per a company statement, it sells 4,000 products through an inventory-led model with subscriptions, B2C On Demand, and B2B as its service offerings. The company is based in and focusses only on the Gurugram market currently. It also claims to have achieved “operating level breakeven” in the month of March 2016, within 1.5 years of its launch.
Recently, the startups that have grabbed funding in the online grocery space include BigBasket ($150 Mn), Zopper ($20 Mn, Series B), ShadowFax ($8.5 Mn, Series A), NinjaCart ($3 Mn) and ZopNow ($10 Mn).
