Bengaluru, NFAPost: Flipkart and Amazon may have gone gungho over their festival sales, but competitors FreshToHome, BigBaket, Grofers are gearing up for further strengthening their competitive edge with new funding and tactical tie up.
What exactly prompted these companies to expand further in the ecommerce landscape of India? It is primarily because of the changing habit of buying and exponential growth of ecommerce as an industry and part of entire trading activities. According to a recent study, India e-commerce will reach US$ 99 billion by 2024, growing at a 27% CAGR over 2019-24.
The second rung companies, specifically who are playing in the grocery delivery like FreshToHome, BigBaket, Grofers are gearing up for fresh infusion of funds. The fund raising initiatives comes along with these companies going for partnerships and JV. Some of them are going ahead with IPO plans.
Bigbasket, the leader among these company, started its journey in 2011 when it was founded by V S Sudhakar, Hari Menon, Vipul Parekh, Abhinay Choudhari and V S Ramesh. Bigbasket has raised a total of $1.1 bullion in funding over 17 rounds. The company raised $90 million in April via a debt financing round.
The company got investment from 9 lead investors including Alibaba Group, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, Trifecta Capital Advisors and CDC Group. Recently, the industry was rife with rumours of proposed tie-up with Tata group, which plans to enter online grocery segment.
Freshtohome, another ecommerce plantform, which was founded in 2015 by Shan Kadavil and Mathew Joseph to deliver fish and meats, is planning to raise another round of funding around $120 million. The company already sells fresh fruits and vegetables, and ready-to-eat foods across seven cities.
The company had earlier raised about $31 million from investors including Iron Pillar, Das Capital, CE Ventures, and a host of angels. Freshtohome registered exponential groow during the Covid-19 pandemic and also planning to expand other cities.
Grofers, another leading ecommerce company headquartered out of Gurugram, succeded in onboarding around 18 lakh new customers since the lockdown, about 64% of whom are first-time online grocery shoppers. The company is also scouting funding to fuel its growth.
Besides technology and sales, the company’s are ramping up their fundraising initiative to strengthen its white-labelling activities and infrastructure build-up.
Strategic decision of Reliance and Tata Group is also felling the growth of the trios.
