Ninjacart receives $10 Mn from Flipkart, others

Agritech Startup Ninjacart has secured Rs 71.83 crore ($10 million) in a Series C funding round led by Flipkart India and Singapore-based GEC3 along with participation from Minu Kataria.

This capital is the first tranche of the $50 million investment committed by retail giant Walmart in August last year. This funding round was announced in last month, but the amount remained undisclosed.

According to regulatory filings, Ninjacart has allotted 2,362 Series C compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS) to these three allottees. And each share is priced at Rs 3,04,142.78 in the current financing round to receive an amount aggregating to Rs 71.83 crore ($10 million).

The filings further revealed that the company has also issued 1,175 CCPS to Tanglin Ventures and Singapore-based Syngenta Ventures, and would receive Rs 35.73 crore ($5 million) soon.

Post the deal, Ninjacart will look to expand its customer base, expansion in new cities, and to enhance the efficiency of the local fresh produce ecosystem.

Prior to the latest investment round, the firm had secured $90 million from Tiger Global in April last year.

Founded by Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Kartheeswaran K K, Ashutosh Vikram, Sharath Loganathan and Vasudevan Chinnathambi, Ninjacart enables retailers and restaurants to source fresh produce directly from the farmers at competitive prices and get it delivered at the doorstep.

The four-year-old startup claims to have a network of more than 200 collection centres and 1,200 warehouses in India. It claims to move over 1,400 tons of fresh produce daily from more than 40,000 farmers and supplies to over 60,000 stores across seven cities - Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Gurugram, Mumbai and Pune.

The Bengaluru-based company buys directly from the farmers and through its network of collection centres and distribution hubs, it supplies straight to the retailers.

In the present scenario where the markets for fresh fruits and vegetables in India are highly unorganized and operate on ages-old schemes with an utterly complex operational structure and where farmers often don’t get the desired value for their produce, Ninjacart and its rivals Crofarm, WayCool and a handful of others have been weeding out those pains by employing tech-based solutions in its supply chain.

Accel Partners, Steadview Capital, Syngenta Ventures, Qualcomm ventures, and Nandan Nilekani are the other investors in Ninjacart.