MaxWholesale raises Series A from IAN Fund, Abu Dhabi family office

MaxWholesale, a business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce and supply chain platform, operated by New Delhi-based 99 Algorithms, has raised $3 million in Series A round led by IAN Fund and Al Falaj Investment Company (AFI), the Abu Dhabi-based private family office focused on venture capital and private equity investments.

Returning investor Abhinav Grover of Maple Capital also invested in his personal capacity, as did former CFO of Naukri.com parent Info Edge (India) Ambarish Raghuvanshi and managing director of women's ethnic wear brand Biba, Siddharth Bindra.

In 2017, MaxWholesale raised $1 million in a bridge funding round led by the Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Maple Capital Advisors, and $150,000 in a seed round from Maple Capital in July 2016.

With the latest investment, MaxWholesale plans to hire talent to develop its technology and accelerate growth.

“We felt that there was a dire need for technology in this sector and hence, we introduced data science into this field to make restocking more predictable and organised. With this approach, we are aiming to change the way business is done at these stores. In the past year, we clocked 20X growth in terms of revenue. Going forward, we’re excited to use this investment to extend our capabilities and drive a bigger impact for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) chains and Kirana stores through our technology-driven platform,” Samarth Agrawal, CEO and founder of MaxWholesale, said.

“We will soon open up our ecosystem to non-banking financial company (NBFC) lenders to provide credit and working capital loans to our Kirana stores,” Agarwal said.

Agarwal co-founded MaxWholesale in July 2016 with Rohit Narang. The platform, which helps kirana stores discover price and scheme on FMCG brands and products, and order the same through its ecommerce platform for reselling, currently services 10,000 kirana stores in New Delhi.

“Kirana stores in India form the backbone of Indian retail by market share. The time is apt for the kirana industry to have the same technology-led advantages as major retail chains,” Raman Roy, co-founder of IAN, said.

The B2B ecommerce segment has garnered considerable investor interest lately. In December last year, Tiger Global led a $26 million Series A funding round in Infra.Market, a marketplace for real estate and construction materials. In November last year, Bengaluru-based B2B food and grocery marketplace Jumbotail Technologies raised $2 million in an ongoing Series B round from Nexus Ventures Partners.