NinjaCart ventures beyond South, rolls out ops in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune

Bengaluru-based 63Ideas Infolabs Pvt. Ltd, which owns business-to-business (B2B) agri-marketing platform NinjaCart, has expanded its operations beyond South to three new cities Delhi, Mumbai and Pune, co-founder Vasudevan Chinnathambi told TechCircle.

He said, “Delhi and Mumbai are among the biggest markets in India. Both these markets are roughly four times larger in terms of population than Bengaluru, which is currently our largest operations centre.”

In a press note, the company stated that it has onboarded 300 farmers and 600 retailers in Delhi and 180 farmers and 360 retailers in Pune.

The company has allocated Rs 100 crore for developing infrastructure and hiring in Delhi and Mumbai. Within a span of six to eight months, NinjaCart’s headcount in these two markets alone would grow to a 1,000-member workforce, said chief executive and co-founder Thirukumaran Nagarajan.

The allocation was out of the Rs 250 crore ($35 million then) it had raised December last from US-based Accel and Switzerland-based agri investor Syngenta Ventures, among other investors.

The development comes less than three months after Nagarajan told TechCircle that expanding into metros and creating satellite cities would be the underlying strategy behind geographical expansion.

Chinnathambi said that the company is looking at Ahmedabad as its next market and is assessing, among others, Lucknow, Kanpur, Surat, Baroda and Nagpur.

He added, “With the launch of Ahmedabad, we will become operational in seven cities and hope to be in around 10 cities by the end of this year.”

NinjaCart

The company was co-founded in July 2015 by Nagarajan, Chinnathambi, Kartheeswaran KK, Sharath Loganathan, Ashutosh Vikram and Sachin P J.

NinjaCart began as a hyper-local grocery delivery company and shifted to the B2B segment. Farmers can sell vegetables and fruit directly to business establishments such as shops, retailers and restaurants via the startup’s platform.

The company, which has raised close to $50 million in total funding so far, counts among its backers Accel, Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s NRJN Trust, Mistletoe, Qualcomm Ventures and M&S Partners.