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Karnataka-based fresh fruits and vegetables etailer Freshboxx has secured an undisclosed amount of angel funding from entrepreneur and angel investor, Ravi Linganuri.
The raised funds will be deployed towards hiring a core team, upgrading its technology, improving its infrastructure and expanding further in the state of Karnataka. The company seeks to multiply its revenue to $150K (INR 1 Cr) per month and its customer base by 3X in the next three months.
Launched in December 2015 by Rohan Kulkarni, Freshboxx is incubated at Sandbox Startups – a unit of the Deshpande Foundation. It has been mentored by C. M. Patil, Chief Executive of Sandbox Startups and Naveen Jha, CEO of Deshpande Foundation.
The company claims to to be the first ecommerce fruit & vegetable platform in Hubli and boasts of having figured out positive unit economics within nine months of operations.
“Other players in this segment are working on a hyper local delivery format—they try to deliver the product at the quickest possible time getting it from different retail players. We focus on the quality of the products and services offered to customers, rather than turning ourselves into express delivery providers,” said founder of Freshboxx, Rohan Kulkarni.
The company currently has a network of more than 1,000 farmers having more than 12,000 acres of land bank. These are predominantly progressive farmers which means that as and when Freshboxx.in expands in any part of the country, the farmer network will be handy to cater its needs.
The portal also provides data feeds to these farmers about which crop to be grown where and when to grow – to get the optimal price from the market. It is working with farm produce organisations & NGOs to have an effective supply-chain process and increase the income & productivity of the farmer.
Freshboxx is currently receiving over 500 orders a week and is growing at 40% M-o-M, according to an official release. The majority of orders are from the B2B segment through partnerships with restaurants, local messes, grocery retailers like Aditya Birla Retail Ltd – MORE, Reliance Retail Ltd, 7days etc. It has over 500 products in the fruits & vegetables segment and plans to enter the household specialty supplies, as well as special international foods, bakery goods, and pastry desserts in its portfolio.
It also claims to have an average monthly revenue of over $37.4K (INR 25 Lakhs) with a decent gross profit margin. The company is also working towards improvising its technology in order to make it easier for ordering, processing, and fulfilment, as well as improving its overall quality of service.
“We are a lean-inventory based business model company that takes orders one day prior to delivering our fruits & vegetables on the next day. In addition, we are also planning to launch a premium, 59 minute-delivery service in October,” Rohan added.
The startup is also nominated and shortlisted for the Indian SME – The New Superpower, Business and Leadership Conclave – 2016, to be held at Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The event will feature brands across 12 sectors that cover the diverse areas of SME industries.
Freshboxx is already in talks for acquiring a company based at Bengaluru, to add value in boosting its technology division.
Ravi Linganuri runs his own venture Instafeez, which was incubated at MIT Pune’s EDUGILD accelerator last year. He is also an angel investor and mentor in EyeRises, EnCashea.com, and Homigo.
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