Online Grocery Startup Jumbotail secures funding from Kalaari Capital and Others

By Shariq Hussain

Posted on July 6, 2017

An online wholesale marketplace startup Jumbotail, has secured $8.5 Million as a part of Series A funding. The funding round was led by venture firm Kalaari Capital with the participation of Nexus Venture Partners.

The Bangalore-based startup was founded in November 2015 by Stanford alumni Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina. Jumbotail is a top tier VC funded startup building an online marketplace for food and grocery, targeted at wholesale buyers. Their vision is to organize the food and grocery ecosystem in India using technology, data science, and design.

The startup works with Kirana stores and businesses, including hotels and restaurants in Bengaluru, to build an efficient supply chain for ordering staples, spices, dry fruits, packaged foods, and FMCG products. They operates in the southern city of Banglore and plans to gradually expand across the country.

Karthik Venkateswaran, Co-founder & CEO, Jumbotail, “While this is a multi-billion-dollar market opportunity, it requires us to solve challenging problems that are so unique to India that copycat models will not work. We are putting our customers first and building technologies and supply chains that will work for the next billion Indians in distributed, chaotic and unstructured environments.”

Sellers (traders, manufacturers, and brands) can list their food, grocery and FMCG products on the Jumbotail marketplace, which is accessible to customers through a mobile app available in four languages – Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and English.

Bala Srinivasa, Partner, Kalaari Capital, adds, “98% of India’s food and grocery consumption is via Kirana stores. Jumbotail brings tech-centric innovation to address massive inefficiencies in terms of product discovery, distribution costs, stock outs, and pricing. We are excited by their ability to eliminate information asymmetry, aggregate previously unavailable demand and supply data, and significantly improve economic outcomes for manufacturers, brands, financial institutions and Kirana owners.”

According to report by Inc42, India’s B2B e-commerce industry is poised to grow to $700 Bn by 2020 out of which, the Indian online grocery market is estimated to reach $40 Mn (INR 270 Cr) by FY‘19 growing at a CAGR of 62% from 2016 to 2022. Read more about Indian Startup Ecosystem.

Online Grocery Startup Jumbotail secures funding from Kalaari Capital and Others