India-based fresh fruit and produce supply chain startup NinjaCart has announced a US$89 million Series C led by one of the leading investors in the country, U.S.-based Tiger Global.
Tiger’s investment, which was made through its Singapore arm Internet Fund V was in exchange for a 26.5 percent stake in the company, which is now valued at $320 million, up from a valuation of $89.5 million at its $35 million Series B led by Accel Partners and Switzerland’s Syngeta Ventures last December. This Series C is nearly double all capital previously raised by the company ($49.5 million), and brings total funding for the startup to just under $140 million.
This is also the largest initial investment ever made in an Indian startup by New York-based Tiger Global.
“I am excited at the future prospect of Ninjacart,” said Subrata Mitra, partner, Accel India. “We at Accel have partnered with category defining companies such as Flipkart, Swiggy and others from their very inception; each of them built on the back of world class innovation, superlative execution & cutting-edge technology. I think Ninjacart is poised to be such a transformational company on the Indian B2B commerce side. We welcome Tiger Global on the journey ahead.”
Launched in 2015 by Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Kartheeswaran KK, Sharath Loganathan, Ashutosh Vikram, Sachin PJ, and Vasudevan Chinnathambi, NinjaCart has grown to become India’s largest B2B supply chain startup, delivering fruit and vegetables sourced from farmers across more than 20 Indian states to more than 17,000 restaurants and kiranas (small neighborhood retail stores) in seven major cities in less than 12 hours.
Through its 100-plus collection centers and fully transparent supply chain, Ninjacart has been successful in not only disrupting India’s traditional and inefficient supply chain systems, but has lifted farmer income by up to 20 percent while offering retailers high quality, single-touch produce without having to go to local marketplaces.
“Our made-for-India technology and India centric solutions have disrupted the way fruits and vegetables move from farms to consumers, improving traditional supply chain, which is bogged in inefficiencies and zero food security,” said Thirukumaran Nagarajan, co-founder and CEO, NinjaCart.
Importantly, due to India’s climate, it is critical to rapidly transport fresh produce. Through its innovative business, Ninjacart has been able to reduce food waste from levels that historically hover around 40 percent to less than 1 percent by generating data-driven recommendations to farmers on what to grow and when in order to match demand cycles.
The company’s platform is able to offer farmers certainty of income and customers more predictable prices by leveraging data drawn from daily food prices, demand and supply levels, market factors, transaction volume, among other considerations, to create forecasting models and pricing systems designed to mitigate volatility. This data is also used in support of a credit platform offered by the company.
“Our vision is to make food safe and affordable for the billion people and change the way it reaches our plates,” said Nagarajan. “We are extremely excited to have Tiger Global part of our vision. It opens up new possibilities and opportunities to build valuable and world class solutions to complex supply chain problems. Our focus will be to make the Ninjacart innovation accessible to more farmers, retailers, restaurants and consumers and leverage our strengths to innovate for new product categories.”
-Lynda Kiernan