Contactless shopping platform Wagonfly secures funding

Wagonfly Smart Shopping Solutions, which offers contactless shopping solutions to offline stores under its eponymous brand name, has raised undisclosed funding in a seed round led by ITI Growth Opportunities Fund.

Angel investors Manoj Kumar, former ecommerce head of Spenser Retail and Krishna Raghavan, board member of stealth mode startup Simple Machines also participated in the round.

The Bengaluru headquartered company will use the funds mainly for scaling technology stack. Of the total funds, one-fourth will be used to set up artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) solutions for retail, a statement said.

Wagonfly was part of The CoWrks Foundry’s first accelerator programme. It is an accelerator owned by co-working space provider CoWrks.

Founded in 2018 by Raghavendra Prasad, Nirantar Rabade and Kapil Katiyar, Wagonfly enables cashless transactions in brick and mortar stores using radio frequency identification, AI, machine learning (ML) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. 

The company claims that retailers can manage the supply chain and also predict customers behaviour using real-time information on inventory and sales data analysis. Additionally, Wagonfly also operates CafeFLY, an express food ordering platform aimed at eliminating queues and crowded cashier points.

The company has already partnered with apparel brands such as Wrogn and Ms Taken and is looking to partner with more brands once the lockdown is lifted.

The funding comes at the time when contactless service solutions are expected to attract investor interest due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

“There is an expectation that customers are going to be apprehensive about walking into stores even post the lockdown. Wagonfly’s solution is what will help retailers build trust in shoppers to walk into brick and mortar stores. It is imperative that brick-and-mortar update their stores into experience centers rather than mere transactional avenues, now more than ever,” Mohit Gulati, managing general partner of ITI Growth Opportunities Fund said.