Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeBusiness1K Kirana Bazaar Raises USD 7 Mn

1K Kirana Bazaar Raises USD 7 Mn

The investment round was co-led by Info Edge Ventures and Partners of Falcon Edge. 1K’s existing investor Kae Capital also participated in the round

Gurugram-based 1K Kirana Bazaar (1K), an offline to online neighborhood store (kirana) network, today announced its Series A funding. They have raised USD 7 million in equity funding from marquee investors. The investment round was co-led by Info Edge Ventures and Partners of Falcon Edge. 1K’s existing investor Kae Capital also participated in the round. Other investors include Blackbuck founders Rajesh Yabaji & Chanakya Hridaya and Hari TN from BigBasket. The company had raised around USD 1.5 million in prior rounds from Kae Capital and 1Crowd.

1K is a consumer-focused retail brand that partners with neighborhood kirana stores in India’s smaller towns to deliver an unmatched shopping experience to end consumers. 1K helps unorganized kirana stores compete with both online and offline organized retail by adopting a first-of-its-kind technology stack that helps kirana store owners acquire and retain consumers, improves their sourcing efficiency, improves their assortment and pricing for end consumers, and in the process helps them multiply their income manifold. The company is ushering in a new era of retail in Bharat with their asset-light model quickly scaling to 150 touchpoints and serving more than 100,000 consumers while maintaining robust unit economics. 1K’s consumer app further extends the capabilities of the kirana store by acting as a virtual shelf to stock long-tail items like homeware, kitchenware, electronics, etc. which consumers can buy for pick up or delivery from the kirana store. Their app has seen promising organic adoption by thousands of consumers, most of whom are first-time online shoppers. The company was founded in late 2018 by Kumar Sangeetesh, Sachin Sharma, and Abhishek Halder. While Sachin, who has an MBA from NITIE Mumbai was Sangeetesh’s colleague at Blackbuck, Abhishek was Sangeetesh’s classmate from IIM Ahmedabad.

As the business raises more funding, Sangeetesh said, “The changing landscape of consumer demand has got us to focus on the real issue of meeting the demand and supply gap, especially in non-urban India. With these funds, our efforts are to bring parity to products and experiences to meet the rising standards of living among Bharat’s new consumers”. He also added, “With our super fast but organic growth, we are confident that we will be able to expand to more markets in northern India and bring about a positive change in the lives of millions of consumers”.

Navroz D Udwadia, Founder, Falcon Edge Capital, said: “1K has built an interesting business model to profitably cater to customers in smaller towns. The team has demonstrated strong on-ground execution backed by robust end to end in-house tech capabilities. We are excited to partner with them in their journey” Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Info Edge Ventures, said: “1K’s value proposition of bringing the benefits of organized retail to non-urban kirana store owners and consumers is much needed and getting strong traction. With first-time online shoppers organically discovering and buying on the 1K app, they are truly changing how Bharat shops and the choices available to consumers. To do all this profitably while multiplying the income of the kirana owner is an audacious goal. We are very excited to partner with the outstanding team at 1K who have shown superlative execution and understanding to make this happen while being capital efficient”.

1K plans to use the new funds to expand to 1000+ kirana store partnerships in the next one year and serve more than a million consumers.

Source: Business World

RELATED ARTICLES
- Advertisment -

Most Popular

Recent Comments