Exclusive: Grofers scoops up fresh funds from Korean VC KTB Ventures

Online grocery delivery platform Grofers has raised $16.7 million from its existing investor KTB Ventures. The fresh tranche came soon after Zomato’s investment in the SoftBank-backed company.

Grofers has allotted 247,765 Series G preference shares to KTB Ventures at $67.48 per share to raise $16.7 million, the company’s regulatory filings in Singapore show.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Grofers has raised the fresh tranche at around $1.01 billion. The Gurugram-based company had raised $100 million from Zomato at around $1 billion and entered the club of unicorns.

Following the fresh allotment of shares, KTB has now a 4.4% stake in Grofers. SoftBank is the largest stakeholder in the company with 46.11% stake followed by Tiger Global which controls 17.07%. Zomato and Sequoia Capital are the third and fourth largest stakeholders in Grofers with 9.3% and 7.8% stake respectively.

Grofers’ co-founders -- Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar -- have 3.78% and 3.09% stake respectively. It’s worth mentioning that Kumar had exited the company in July and recently launched his new venture called Warpli.

Caveat: The above shareholding is based on the existing shares held by the respective members, not accounting for the unvested ESOP pool of the company. 

Queries sent to Grofers on Monday regarding valuation and latest shareholding structure (post this tranche) didn’t elicit any response. We will update the story as and when the company responds.

Grofers has a long list of angel investors which include Deepinder Goyal, Sujeet Kumar, Neeraj Arora, Gaurav Agarwal and Saumya Agarwal. As per Fintrackr’s findings, Goyal and Kumar have been investors in the company since 2015.

For the past couple of months, Grofers has been scaling its 10-minutes grocery delivery service which is currently present in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Jaipur. While Zomato has completely exited from the grocery delivery service, it’s now focusing on the segment through its investment in Grofers. 

Instant grocery delivery is now becoming a battleground for well-established players in the e-grocery space. Besides Grofers, Dunzo and Swiggy Instamart are also emphasising on quick deliveries ranging from 10 to 30 minutes. These companies are setting up dark stores to keep merchants’ fast-moving SKUs to facilitate on-demand deliveries. 

Tata Digital-controlled BigBasket also re-launched its express delivery service. Mumbai-based Zepto also enables within 10 mins deliveries in a few pockets of Mumbai.

While Grofers’ Singapore-based company is yet to file annual financial statements for FY21, the company’s revenue grew 78.52% to Rs 2,289.2 crore in FY20 from Rs 1,282.3 crore in FY19. Overall, the company had recorded a loss of Rs 1,181.2 crore in FY20.