This investment will predominantly go into geographical expansion, building the tech stack critical to managing complexity at scale efficiently and effectively, and enhance predictive capabilities to provide market insights to brand partners.
Bengaluru-based Sales & Distribution (S&D) enablement platform AnKa SumMor has raised INR 11.6 crores in Pre-Series A led by Inflection Point Ventures (IPV). Marquee angel investors like Pratul Shroff from Waao Partners, Brijesh Agrawal, Co-founder & Director, IndiaMART, and other leading industry figures have also participated in the round. AnKa SumMor is on a mission to democratize the offline market by re-engineering the conventional FMCG Sales & Distribution(S&D) model to transmit similar scale leverage & benefit of legacy brands to challenger / new age brands through a technology-enabled shared ‘Plug & Play’ distribution platform.
Incubated and funded by Fireside Ventures in April 2018, the start-up founded by Ashok George and Rajiv Joshi provides emerging, challenger brands like McVities, Wai Wai, Yoga Bar, Yellow Diamond, Bauli, Tru Earth, Om Bhakti, and Paper Boat among others, access to modern trade outlets, supermarkets and specialty stores at half the S&D costs they would have otherwise incurred by doing it on their own.
‘SumMor Model’ simplifies the distribution value chain by consolidating and aggregating CFA/Super Stockists, multi-distributors for multi-channel distribution in a metro city or State into a single point operation under one roof. Besides giving the brands reach and presence across relevant outlets in a city or State, the start-up provides them with outlet level sales data in real-time with visibility of sales by SKU at each outlet, improved order fill rates of 90-95 %, up from 70-75 %; assistance with stock rotation at outlets to maintain product freshness, improved trade scheme utilization, reduced market expiry and damage, and market mapping.
On the fundraising, Ashok George, Co-founder & CEO, AnKa SumMor Foods Pvt. Ltd. said, “We are excited to have IPV and angel investors on our cap table. S&D enablement players will play a pivotal role in fuelling the burgeoning Indian retail market which is projected to touch $260 billion in the next 4-5 years. Anka SumMor is poised to redraft the traditional playbook by offering professional S&D solutions to improve the overall value chain and provide protection against risks such as continuity due to attrition, trade spend leakages due to lack of transparency to challenger and new age brands.”
Anka Summor has grown during and post the pandemic by 65% and now has more than 12 brands benefiting from its S&D solutions covering > 8,000 retail outlets across Hyderabad, Chennai, and Bengaluru and plans to exit FY22 covering 23,000 retail outlets with an ARR of INR 60 crores. Over the next 5 years, the start-up aims to establish its operations in 15 cities and coverage of 200,000 relevant retail, achieve an operational break-even in FY 2023, and deliver ₹500 crores in annualized revenue in FY 2025.
This investment will predominantly go into geographical expansion, building the tech stack critical to managing complexity at scale efficiently and effectively, and enhance predictive capabilities to provide market insights to brand partners. The brand will also invest in increasing infrastructure and resources to increase the number of outlets serviced to deliver growth for brand partners.
“Success of FMCG businesses depends on how well and deep their distribution model is. India is a complex geography and it has taken global FMCG companies decades to cover the entire country by heavily investing in setting the distribution infrastructure. The new age brands don’t have to invest millions in setting up their distribution channel when a company like Anka SuMor can do this for them. A shared distribution network would be mean lower operational costs and better pricing for the consumers. We understand this sector well because of our other investments and were able to align naturally to Anka SuMor’s vision” explains Vinay Bansal, Founder and CEO of Inflection Point Ventures.
Early investor Kannan Sitaram, Partner at Fireside Ventures said, “’When Fireside started investing in early-stage consumer brands in 2017, we realized that getting products on retail shelves was a huge pain point for SMEs. And this represented a large national business & investment opportunity for us. Ergo we partnered with Ashok and Rajiv to build a professionally run, tech-enabled distribution company specially focused on emerging brands with a vision that would level the playing field both on access to retail shelves and on the cost of access. From those initial beginnings in a Fireside meeting room, Anka Summor has come a long way, starting with its Hyderabad operations, then establishing itself in Chennai, and now launching in Bengaluru. We are delighted that they have completed this funding round which will enable them to bring in the full power of technology to deliver on the business vision.”
In April 2021 AnKa SumMor raised INR 3 crore as a part of its pre-Series A round and now with this new additional investment of INR 8.6 crore the round is closed at INR 11.6 crores.
Source: Business World
