[Funding alert] Rural retail aggregator SuperK raises Rs 6 Cr in seed round led by STRIVE VC

SuperK, a tech-enabled grocery retail chain for small towns, on Thursday announced that it has raised Rs 6 crore in seed funding led by Strive VC. Other investors including Firstcheque, Ramakant Sharma & Syndicate, serial entrepreneur Srinivas Anumolu, Anand Chandrasekaran (ex-Snapdeal CPO/Facebook Director), Lalit Keshre (CEO at Groww), Rajan Bajaj (CEO at SlicePay), Sampad Swain (CEO at Instamojo), and many more veterans from the startup ecosystem also participated in this round.

According to the official statement, SuperK plans to utilise this investment for expanding its infrastructure, improving technology, and hiring talent.

Speaking about the fundraise, Neeraj Menta, Co-founder at SuperK, said, 

"Our mission is to bring modern retail experiences to the smallest of towns in India by empowering entrepreneurs from these towns to easily own and operate supermarkets. Most other startups that are helping retailers are only providing tools to these stores while we are driving outcomes for the stores by using the technology ourselves."

"We have spent the last 1.5 years validating and tweaking our business model and with a strong operating playbook in place, we are now investing in logistics infrastructure and tech products to further improve and scale our network of stores,” added Neeraj.

ALSO READ

[Funding alert] Vernacular e-learning platform Vidyakul raises $500K led by JITO Angel Network Investors

Bengaluru and Kadapa (AP) based SuperK is a tech-enabled grocery retail aggregator enabling local entrepreneurs to set up and operate mini supermarkets and provide a modern retail experience to customers of Tier III, IV, V towns of India. Batchmates at BITS Pilani, Neeraj Menta and Anil Thontepu founded SuperK in December 2019 with a vision to empower small format retail stores across India.

On the impact seen by the stores, SuperK Co-founder Anil Thontepu said,  

“We have shown 3-4X growth in sale volume in our early stores and this resulted in a huge improvement in take-home incomes of retailers who took up our franchise. We have added 20+ stores to our network and have served 40,000+ families in the past year with a positive contribution margin and are on track to reach 70+ stores with an annual GMV of $10 million by the end of 2021.”

SuperK’s system seamlessly connects warehouses, stores, and vendors via mobile apps. They are also in the process of launching a mobile app for customers to place orders, provide financial services for customers through stores and in-store tech for engagement and marketing, the company stated. 

Commenting on the investment, Lead Investor Nikhil Kapur, Partner at Strive, said, “While existing organised retailers are competing with individual retailers, SuperK is enabling local entrepreneurs to effectively compete with large chains. Their unique business model allows them to be asset-light and operate with negative working capital. This allows SuperK to scale much faster than any other retail chain. A scalable business model along with a strong tech background of the founders will make SuperK the largest retail chain of India in the next 10 years.”