Country Delight, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) milk and groceries delivery startup, plans to entire kitchen essentials segment in 12 months to increase its market share from 2-3 per cent to 10-12 per cent. Chakradhar Gade, co-founder, and CEO of the company, said the overall grocery market in India’s top ten cities is worth $15 billion, with milk accounting for 20 per cent of that.
It also intends to expand its product portfolio. The D2C startup, which has majorly focused on perishable products, will now offer longer shelf-life products to cover the entire kitchen essentials segment.
“We are launching staples as a category, and staples have subcategories such as oils, spices, rice, and wheat; another category is snacks, as we see a high level of consumer interest in homemade snacking items. Our idea is to capture the entire kitchen essentials of a household,” Gade stated.
Profitability
The startup earned ₹600 crore in revenue in FY22. “We expect to double the turnover by the end of FY23,” said the CEO. Also, the company will achieve profit within a year, he added.
“We expect the business to become profitable in a year. Eventually, we’d like to go public as well, so it’s a continuous effort,” said Gade. As a business, it is unit economics positive, he added.
The startup works with local farmer networks around its manufacturing facilities. The CEO said, ‘Country Delight has manufacturing facilities in five locations across the country. We source our produce from the farmers, process it at these facilities, and then deliver it directly to the doorstep of the customer.’
The CEO also added “We have our own last-mile infrastructure, so we do around eight million deliveries per month.” While the company handles 99 per cent of its deliveries, its products are also available across popular channels such as Blinkit, Amazon, and others. Gade however said, “Only select items are on these platforms and that is for brand-building purposes.”
It has a regular subscriber base of 3.50 lakh households, which it expects to go up to half a million subscribers by the end of the year. Currently, Country Delight has 150 products in its portfolio, which it intends to increase to 300 within the next six to eight months.