Grofers the online grocery startup ends up with a $200M investment from Soft Bank’s Vision Fund
BigBasket has just received an investment of $150 million in the past week and Grofers, another online grocery startup followed its footstep.
Grofers landed up with an investment of $200 million so that it can compete with Amazon and Walmart in this industry. This round of investment in one of the largest in the entire online grocery sectors to date. This round of investment was led by Soft Bank’s own Vision Fund. Vision Fund is known for investing their money on the different growing internet economy. Some of the existing investors such as Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global were also a part of this investment round.
Grofers which is a 5-year-old startup is now working with almost 5000 stores all across India. It is now present in 13 cities spread across India. The co-founder and Chief executing officer of Grofers Albinder Dhindsa said in an interview with TechCrunch that the investment that they will get will be used by the company to expand into new markets so that they can reach millions of Indian consumers. The exact cities that the online chain will be launched were not mentioned by the Chief Executing Officer. He also added that they do not want to enter any new market just to increase their coverage, but the main focus for them will be earning profits. They have already become profitable in Delhi and soon they will start becoming profitable in Kolkata.
The main rival of this startup is BigBasket which also got their investment of $150 million last week. Grofers is also rivals with companies like Uber eats and Swiggy. The main issue that these small companies are facing is that they have to compete with all the giants which are trying to grow in this industry. Some of the giants which are trying to grow in this industry are Flipkart, Walmart, and Amazon.
Amazon Pantry is now available in more than 100 cities, but the customer base of Grofers is the reason which has helped them grow over the years. The chief executing officer also confirmed that the competitors of Grofers like Amazon are not yet very serious in their grocery delivery business and are more focused on their e-commerce business.
The food and grocery industry in India is growing at a very rapid manner. It is expected that by the year 2023 it can reach about $869 billion in sales numbers which is huge. Other businesses who have raised such big numbers in investment are OYO, Paytm and PolicyBazar. OYO had raised a total of $100 million to grow its budget hotel business in India.