[Funding alert] Contactless shopping experience startup Wagonfly raises $500K led by ITI Growth

Bengaluru-based contactless shopping and delivery experience startup Wagonfly has raised around $500,000 from Investment Trust of India (ITI) group-led early stage venture capital fund, ITI Growth, and angel investor Manoj Kumar.

Mohit Gulati, managing general partner, ITI Growth Opportunities Venture Fund, said that due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, there is an expectation that customers are going to be apprehensive about walking into stores even after the lockdown ends.

“Wagonfly’s solution will help retailers build trust in shoppers to walk into brick and mortar stores by creating a completely contact-free shopping experience with zero human interaction and cashier-less stores,” Mohit added.

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Founded by Raghavendra Prasad in 2018, Wagonfly uses radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, commonly used for identifying and tracking objects, to tag items in a retail store for providing an end-to-end smart shopping solution from inventory management to asset tracking and smart checkout without the need for any human intervention. 

With Wagonfly’s solution, retailers can not only track each of their items at different stages of the supply chain but also predict customers’ behaviour and provide them with the products and services that they need. This also allows stakeholders to access real time information on current inventory, set up auto-replenishment, analyze sales data and customer preferences and thus make informed decisions, the company added.

The firm has already partnered with brands like Wrogn and Ms Taken, and is looking to partner with more brands once the lockdown is lifted.

Wagonfly also operates CafeFLY, an online marketplace, which is completely digitised. It allows customers to order all household essentials, ranging across various brands, and delivers it to their doorstep within 24 hours, and is contact-free. The company said this was mainly aimed to serve the elderly folk and families with infants that fear stepping out into grocery stores amid the COVID-19 scare.

“COVID 19 has completely changed the retail paradigm. In the coming days, whenever the retail outlets open, consumers are going to prefer contactless journey in brick and mortar as well as in ecommerce. Wagonfly is going to play a lead role in creating the best retail experience for customers in stores as well as in malls through their contactless checkout technology,” added Manoj Kumar.