Peppertap closes Series B round with $4M from Innoven; buys Jiffstore

Hyperlocal grocery delivery startup PepperTap has closed its Series B funding round by raising $4 million from Innoven Capital, according to a statement.

The startup had recently secured $36 million in this round from Snapdeal, Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ru-Net, Beenext and JAFCO Asia.

Till date, PepperTap has raised $51.2 million in external capital.

PepperTap, run by Gurgaon-based Nuvo Logistics Pvt Ltd, also said it has acquired Bangalore-based hyperlocal grocery delivery startup Jiffstore for an undisclosed amount. Jiffstore's employees will join PepperTap offices in Gurgaon and Bengaluru, the statement said.

Jiffstore was founded in June 2014 by four software engineers—Abdulla, Aswin Ram, Satish Basavaraj and Sandeep Sreenath. The startup was initially incubated by Kochi-based Startup Village, before being picked by Times Internet Ltd's TLabs for its latest batch.

In May 2014, it secured an undisclosed amount in funding from seed-stage impact investment firm Unitus Seed Fund.

PepperTap has launched a vendor app, one for organised retail chains and another for standalone vendors, which will go live on Google Play Store soon. It has also formed marketing tie-ups with other startups to attract users.

Founded in November last year by Navneet Singh and Milind Sharma, PepperTap is a mobile-first hyperlocal grocery delivery service that provides on-demand grocery products to consumers. It claims to deliver within two hours of receiving an order in 18 cities.

In September, it had raised $36 million in Series B funding from online marketplace Snapdeal and other investors.

PepperTap competes with other grocery marketplaces such as Grofers and ZopNow. Inventory-led firms such as BigBasket, LocalBanya and EkStop, a Mumbai-based e-grocery which was acquired by Godrej Nature's Basket, can also be counted as PepperTap's competition.

Locodel Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs hyperlocal grocery and fresh food delivery platform Grofers, recently raised $120 million (Rs 780 crore) in fresh funding led by Japanese internet conglomerate SoftBank Corp. Existing investors Apoletto Managers, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital also participated in this round of funding.

Grofers recently expanded its talent pool by acqui-hiring Bangalore-based food delivery app SpoonJoy and B2B logistics startup Townrush.

Techcircle.in had reported recently that online supermarket LocalBanya.com was shedding staffers as it prepares to alter its business model. The company may shift from its inventory-led, warehousing-centric model to become an online marketplace for groceries.