[Funding alert] Grocery retail aggregator Kirana King raises Rs 7Cr from RVCF

Jaipur-based firm Kirana King, a unit of Kirana King Retail Network Pvt Limited, has raised a Pre-Series A funding round of Rs 7 crore from Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund (RVCF). 

Kirana King started its retail aggregation operations in 2017 and has a grocery retail network of more than 200 stores in Jaipur. It now aims to expand its operations in various parts of Rajasthan where it targets achieving 1,000 stores by the end of 2021.

The company is aiming to achieve four times revenue growth during the ongoing financial year in comparison to the last year.

“We defined the problem statement at the brainstorming level of our idea of Kirana King in two words — empowerment and change, as most of the dynamic and revolutionary products or services across the globe have been driven either through empowerment or change. We went into detail study of the missing links that had been acting as severe bottlenecks in the grocery retail ecosystem in India,” said Founder and CEO Anup Kumar.

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Kirana King seeks to use the funds to expand its retail network, manpower, enhancement and development of technology.

It provides a gamut of services to conventional kirana stores through its dynamo of RaaS (Retail as a Service), which is a combination of store transformation, enhanced and convenient store layouts, supply chain and marketing of these store among consumers to drive more footfalls, digital solutions, eCommerce stack, and training and development of kirana ecosystem. 

According to the Kirana King, RaaS model impacts the core journey touchpoints of grocery consumers when they shop at their local neighbourhood stores and they soon realise the massive changes in operations and convenience at these stores which was missing from the Indian grocery retail ecosystem all this while.

"There is no problem when it comes to the resources available to the kirana stores but there was a lack of a comprehension platform which can act as a single window service to this massive sector of grocery retail. We need to psychologically align our beliefs with that of the kirana store owners,” Anup further said.

Gaurav Chowdhry, VP at RVCF, stated, “For an early-stage investor like us, Kirana King looks very promising with its Retail as a Service (RaaS) USP. We are very excited to join Kirana King at this stage of their massive expansion.”