Milkbasket raises $3 M in Pre-Series A from Unilever Ventures and others
The company will utilise the funds to strengthen its technological capabilities, expand its assortment and customer base, and monetise other revenue streams.
Milkbasket, a micro-delivery platform for groceries, announced on Tuesday that it has secured a $3 million investment in a Pre-Series A round. Unilever Ventures, the venture capital and private equity arm of Unilever also participated in the round, among others.
The Gurugram-based startup was founded in 2015, by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain, and Yatish Talvadia. It started with catering to the unique Indian habit of getting fresh milk delivered at home every morning and has today grown to become a popular grocery delivery platform in Gurugram.
Designed to provide extreme convenience, MilkBasket claims to fulfil orders received from its customers on a wide selection of grocery products before midnight and get these delivered to their doorstep before 7:00 am every day.
Announcing the association, Anant Goel, CEO of Milkbasket, said: “We have always believed that Milkbasket’ s unique model will find its play in the large online grocery market. The endorsement from Unilever Ventures is an important mark of confidence in our potential.”
“Milkbasket is growing exponentially and has become a popular brand in Gurugram. Our vision is to become a strong player in online top-up groceries platform space in India within the next five years, and we strongly believe that this is an important milestone in our journey,” Anant added.
Olivier Garel, Head of Unilever Ventures said, “Unilever Ventures aims to support some of the most disruptive emerging commerce models and Milkbasket’s approach, leveraging Indian consumers habits and preferences, bringing convenience and attractive unit economics is definitely one of them.”
This investment and Unilever’s expertise will be deployed to strengthen technology at the back end as well as front end, expanding their assortment and customer base and monetising other streams of revenue.
Unilever Ventures invests in early stage, promising companies, accelerating growth by providing access to Unilever's global ecosystem, assets, and expertise. The fund looks to invest in personal care and digital transformation. Its key focus areas within digital transformation include content creation, artificial intelligence, data analytics, e-commerce, internet of things, mobile marketing and video, in both developed and emerging markets.
Unilever Ventures' existing investments include Clavis Insight, Percolate, Blis, Gousto, Instacart, Blow, Nutrafol, Sun Basket, Iluminage Beauty, Froosh, and Voltea.
Milkbasket’s current investors include BLUME Ventures, Lenovo Capital (LCIH), Empower Investment, Hofan Capital, Draphant, and angel investors including Peter Zou (CEO, YeahMobi), Vinay Bansal (ex-CFO, Wildcraft), Vikas Chauhan of 1MG, Deepak Jain of Bain & Co and select Milkbasket customers.
Early last year, online grocery market leader Bigbasket had raised Rs 45 crore in venture debt from Trifecta Capital.
Supr Daily, Dail Ninja Essentials, and MrNeeds are the other players in the micro-delivery space.
