1K Kirana, a startup based on Gurugram, has raised $ 25 million in its B-Series for the fourth year to scale another venture capital attempt to digitize the unorganized high-performance chain of stores “Kirana” in India. Leading the round are Alpha Wave Global ($ 11.5 million), Info Edge Ventures ($ 10.5 million) and Kae capital. Other investors include Beacon Trusteeship Ltd, Kalysta Capital, Elite Zilla, Infimomentum Ventures, Sachin Sharma and Amrit Acharya.
1K Kirana, founded by Kumar Sangitesh, Abhishek Halder and Sachin Sharma, primarily serves as a distribution network for local department stores to facilitate their struggle with acquiring stocks at the best affordable price. They also take care of the digital marketing needs of these stores to increase the number of customers passing through the door. In addition to all this, 1K Kirana supports an app that end-level consumers can use to place orders from these stores with home delivery and pay for them.
1K Kirana has set itself the goal of increasing profits for these neighboring stores by getting them better inventory offers, and allowing them to sell them in larger quantities to maximize the inefficient profitability of these stores. In the process, consumers get better access to a more diverse catalog of products with the ability to digitally interact, while supporting local businesses.
Explaining further, co-founder Kumar Sangitesh said: “We control their entire supply chain. We supply them with goods, do marketing and increase consumer traffic to the store. These stores operate as a franchise partner and earn money through commissions, not through margins. ”
Neighborhood stores make up a significant portion of India’s ever-growing retail market and as a variety of retail giants invest solid yards to establish market share. Many of them like Amazon with their new Smart Commerce, have made an effort to incorporate these conventional stores into their business model. 1K Kirana seems to have taken a principled approach by creating these neighboring stores and using their relatively stable consumer base, especially in the cities of Tier-2 and Tier-3.
“Such an impact, which 1K has created in a very short period of time in the lives of both consumers and franchise partners, is extremely difficult to achieve. The 1K Mall app has already allowed non-urban Indians to shop online for the first time, ”said Kitty Agarwal, partner at Info Edge Ventures, in a statement.
In this round, the total capital raised by 1K Kirana is $ 34 million, and the company is now valued at $ 110 million, an impressive 5-fold jump compared to its estimate of the Extended Series A round at $ 20 million.
