The funding will help accelerate GullyBuy’s sales momentum and product evolution
Mumbai, NFAPost: GullyBuy Software (www.gullybuy.com), a Pune-based software startup, today announced that it has closed Rs. 4 crores in Pre-Series A funding from SEED Enterprises LLP and a few individual investors.
Pune-based GullyBuy provides a unique digital hyperlocal marketplace solution that enables buyers to order online from nearby/city stores selling groceries, food/eateries, medicines, and many other categories of daily necessities. GullyBuy’s USPs are store empowerment as a key business objective and an asset-light business model designed for rapid scale.
SEED Enterprises LLP is a niche family office investment firm of Avinash Sethi, Mitesh Bohra and Siddharth Sethi, the founders of InfoBeans Technologies, a highly successful NSE listed IT Services firm.
Retail solution
InfoBeans Co-Founder & CEO Siddharth Sethi who joins the GullyBuy Board said while offline-to-online retail solutions are proliferating, InfoBeans decided to back GullyBuy because of their vision of empowering local stores, a segment that has been underserved by the digital economy.
“Others either enable standalone online stores or are logistics apps that bypass stores, while the e-commerce giants’ strategy is to effectively make them their agents. The GullyBuy team is very talented and experienced, and we are confident of their ability to deliver. This is our second investment with the founders of GullyBuy, the first one being Sapience where we had a successful exit to the NEXT Investors’ (Credit Suisse) funded Sapience Corp in the US,” said InfoBeans Co-Founder & CEO Siddharth Sethi.
GullyBuy’s mobile apps are aligned to the informal nature of the regular buy-sell transactions with local stores. Users experience a simple Order-Pay-Pickup/Delivery workflow, made progressively simpler as the app learns user order patterns.
Vendor app
Stores come online ready to receive orders instantly after downloading the Vendor App. They can opt for product listing, offers, discounts etc. at their own pace. The store app is free (no fees, commissions) and payment is directly from buyers to them.
GullyBuy Software Co-founder Shirish Deodhar said GullyBuy is delighted by the confidence placed by SEED in the company.
“The funding will help our Sales/Marketing team to promote the app more aggressively and Engineering to accelerate the product roadmap. This space has unlimited potential but is also highly competitive, and hence we continue to seek more funding,” said GullyBuy Software Co-founder Shirish Deodhar.
Basic functionality
GullyBuy Software Co-founder Swati Deodhar the company chose to release apps with basic functionality to validate the market.
“A steady stream of innovations is in the pipeline. They include Machine Learning based app recommendations, analytics, links for Delivery Partners and Brand promotions, and language choice. We are also working on a concept called GullyShop, which will be very beneficial to stores,” said GullyBuy Software Co-founder Swati Deodhar.
GullyBuy is founded in October 2019 by a team of veteran serial entrepreneurs. They have previously established, scaled, and successfully exited three other technology companies. The GullyBuy vision is to ‘Simplify Shopping, Simplify Life’ through a digital marketplace platform that directly connects buyers and stores in neighbourhoods (gullies) across India.
