ShopKirana raises funding from ex-Samsung exec, others

Indore-based Shop Kirana E Trading Pvt Ltd, which runs B2B platform ShopKirana connecting individual retailers with suppliers, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Atul Jain, former senior vice president of Samsung global headquarters and food tech startup Hola Chef's founder Anil Gelra.

Jaikumar Nair, former senior vice president of Mondelez and a few other veterans from the FMCG industry also participated in this round.

The funds will be utilsed to upgrade the tech platform to make ShopKirana's model scalable in other cities.

"We are looking forward to scale ShopKirana in 10 cities by the end of 2016," co-founder Tanutejas Saraswat, co-founder, ShopKirana told VCCircle. "We are creating a dent in the retail universe by giving the power of technology in the hands of the most traditional and oldest business owner in this country, i.e., the kirana store," he added.

Founded in February 2015 by Tanutejas Saraswat, Sumit Ghorawat and Deepak Dhanotiya. Shopkirana is an app based platform which integrates the demands of thousands of retailers and passes them on to brands, thereby ensuring competitive prices and a single sourcing channel for retailers. In turn, brands get to directly connect with retailers for promotions or product launch.

The supply chain innovation startup provides value added services like logistics, banking, loan, IT and ordering systems to the retailers.

It claims to have over 3000 retailers in Indore and doing sales of Rs 6-7 lakh per day. Around 90 brands are associated with Shopkirana, including P&G, HUL and ITC, among others.

Inc42 was the first to report the development.

In December 2015, Bangalore-based Sabonka Tecnologies Pvt Ltd, which runs B2B e-commerce marketplace Shotang.com, has raised $5 million (around Rs 33 crore) in Series A funding from Exfinity Venture Partners and Unitus Impact Livelihoods Fund.

In the B2B e-commerce space, online marketplace for industrial goods Industrybuying.com has recently received an undisclosed amount in angel funding from family members of the Chennai-based Murugappa and TVS groups.  Another venture in this space is Tolexo.com. Run by Tolexo Online Pvt Ltd, Tolexo is part of IndiaMART InterMESH Ltd, which runs an online B2B platform for small and medium businesses connecting global buyers with suppliers under the brand IndiaMART. IndiaMART plans to invest Rs 100 crore in Tolexo for its brand building and business operations by March 2016.