Social Commerce Platform For Fruits And Vegetables Otipy Raises $10.2 Mn Led By SIG

Social commerce platform Otipy has raised $10.2 Mn in its series A round led by SIG. Omidyar Network India, Innoven Capital. Existing investors Inflection Point Ventures, Pravega and FactorE also participated in the round.

Prior to this round, the startup had raised $2 Mn in 2020 led by IPV.

Founded in 2020 by Varun Khurana and Prashant Jain, the agritech and social commerce startup  procures fruits and vegetables directly from its network of farms and delivers them within 12 hours, the company claims. 

The Delhi-headquartered startup claims to source over 2,500 tonnes of fresh produce every month from over 10,000 farmers across India. Additionally the company claims to service over 2 lac Indian households. As per an ET report, Otipy services about 8,000-10,000 orders a day.

It follows a social commerce model where the company delivers the products to local shops and resellers, especially women, who handle the last-mile delivery.

According to Otipy, these resellers earn 8-10% in commission on each fulfilment.

“This new round of funding will support us in our future growth trajectory, adding additional categories on our supply chain making it more efficient and accelerate our mission of making fresh, nutritious food accessible to all,” said Varun Khurana, cofounder and chief executive officer, Otipy. 

“Fresh produce is a 35-40% gross margin category, however, it is the wastage that kills those margins. We are amongst the first companies that have been able to control it via our innovative model,” Khurana added.

The funding round comes as other social commerce platforms like Dealshare, CityMall and Trell have recently raised funds from investors, including Tiger Global and General Catalyst.

Currently, both the sectors in which Otipy is operating in i.e agritech and social commerce are expected to occupy a significant portion of the market in the future. 

According to a report titled The Future Of Commerce In India by Sequoia Capital India, a venture capital fund and Bain and Company, a global consultancy firm, the next biggest driver for Indian ecommerce will be social commerce. Indian startups such as Meesho, BulBul, DealShare, Mall91 and SimSim are some of the players driving the growth for social commerce in India, a market that is nascent, with $1.5-2 Bn gross merchandise value (GMV) in the fiscal year 2019-20 (FY20) but could scale at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55-60% to $16-$20 Bn GMV by 2025. 

As for agritech, with 58% of the population dependent on agriculture, the growth potential of the sector is immense in the country, given this quality. India’s agritech market is estimated to reach $24.1Bn by 2025, as per Inc42 Plus analysis. Our latest report titled India’s Agritech Market Landscape Report, 2021 delves into this emerging agritech landscape and finds out what is driving the revenue in this sector.