Milkbasket makes second acquisition, buys e-grocer PSR Supply Chain

Micro-delivery startup Milkbasket announced that it has made its second acquisition by acquiring Bengaluru-based PSR Supply Chain in a deal whose terms were undisclosed.

Anant Goel, co-founder and CEO, said the acquisition will help the company strengthening its customer base and offerings in Bengaluru where it launched operations in January 2019.

“While we are growing phenomenally on our own, we are always on the lookout for strategic acquisitions to help us shorten our learnings in specific regions or technologies.,” Goel added.

The acquisition comes four months after it made its first acquisition of the Noida-based online grocery venture Veggie India in March 2019.

PSR Supply Chain Services Private Limited, which operates the venture PSR Supply Chain, was founded in 2015 by Nagarjuna Reddy Chagamreddy and Sai Abhishek Velukuru.

Supply Chain launched operations in East Bengaluru and established a network of more than 4,000 registered customers over the last four years, the statement said adding that the last reported annual turnover of the company was over Rs 2.5 crore.

Milkbasket

Last month, Milkbasket raised $10.5 million (Rs 73 crore then) in a round led by existing investor Unilever Ventures, the venture arm of consumer products company Unilever Plc along with Mayfield India, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and a few Indian family offices.

The company had also announced that an earlier committed debt investment deal with Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal’s BAC Acquisitions was called off following a mutual decision.

Founded in 2015 by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia, Milkbasket has a presence in Delhi, Gurugram, Noida and Bengaluru.

Unlike bigger players in the online grocery delivery market like Bigbasket, Grofers, Amazon and Flipkart, Milkbasket positions itself as the online version of local mom-and-pop grocery stores but with more stock-keeping units (SKUs). It claims to have an assortment of over 8,500 SKUs. The startup supplies perishable and non-perishable products that are bought in smaller quantities but with higher frequency.

The company started off by delivering milk, bread and eggs. It has since expanded to a whole range of daily groceries. According to the company, over 70% of its revenue comes from non-milk products. The firm claims to be serving over 100,000 households today, growing 20% month-on-month.

In an interaction with TechCircle last year, CEO Anant Goel had said that Milkbasket was planning to expand to the top 10 cities in India over the next two years.

Milkbasket’s largest funding round comes at a time when the online grocery market is accelerating with large venture capital funds flowing in. Grofers and Bigbasket raised fresh investments recently and Walmart and Amazon are ramping up grocery operations.