Nine month old Indian grocery delivery service PepperTap has closed its third round of fundraising, announcing commitments totaling $36 million.

 

The round, led by India’s rival to Amazon, Snapdeal, also included existing investors, Sequoia and SAIF Partners, and new investors, Ru-net, JAFCO, and BeeNext.

 

After receiving $1.2 million in March, followed by $10 million in April, PepperTap CEO and co-founder Navneet Singh explained that the company is considering expanding this latest round by $20 million after receiving strong interest from overseas venture capitalists during the final stages of closing the current round.

 

Like other services, PepperTap works with existing stores and delivers groceries on demand to customers within two hours of ordering; however, the company has plans to reduce delivery time to one hour within six to nine months. One aspect that sets PepperTap apart is that the company deliberately partners with stores that need an online presence but don’t have the backing to achieve it. By splitting cities into zones and using one store to supply each zone, PepperTap helps their partners quickly scale up.

 

“Stores right now face the challenge of people going online, [many] don’t have the finances to create their own infrastructure… their customers will migrate online, so we’re trying to help these guys compete with the bigger boys,” says Singh.

 

Although PepperTap is operating in a crowded space vying for market share with the likes of ZopNow, Grofers, Big Basket, and LocalBanya, it has seen meteoric growth within a short period of time. In April, when it received funding from Seqouia, the company was operating only in the city of Gurgaon, but today it is operating in 17 cities across the country and has plans to expand to 75 cities by the end of  March 2016. In January, the company was processing between 30 and 40 orders per day, and today it is processing between 15,000 and 17,000 orders per day, with a recent one-day spike to 40,000 after running print newspaper ads. By March 2016, sales are expected to reach $250 million, with staff doubling in that time.

 

The company plans to use the fresh capital to fund operational expenses as well as fuel the development of its technology. Currently Android accounts for 85% of the company’s orders, iOS accounts for 10%, and the remainder of the orders are received via mobile web. Although the web accounts for only 5% of orders, the company has no plans of switching its business model to being app-only as have many others.