E-commerce major Flipkart India and its US-based parent Walmart have made a joint strategic investment of $145 million in agritech start-up Ninjacart.

Ninjacart connects farmers directly with retailers, restaurants, and service providers. Currently, the company’s supply chain is said to be equipped for moving vegetables and fruits from farmers to retailers and businesses across seven cities, every day in less than 12 hours. Earlier in 2019, Walmart and Flipkart have made an undisclosed investment in Ninjacart, followed by another $30 million investment in 2020.

Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart Group, said, “As a homegrown company, we have constantly focused on creating the right infrastructure and technological solutions that support local farmers, producers, and food processors. With this investment, we are further able to strengthen our grocery footprint and offering as consumers across the country throng to e-grocery for quality and affordable options in the fresh category. Through technology, we are able to bring great efficiencies in the value chain and create an impact by providing the farming community additional opportunities for better incomeAt Flipkart, we are well poised and committed to building a sustainable ecosystem for fresh produce and uplift the communities associated with it in the process.”

Expansion

Today, Flipkart delivers grocery in 1,800 cities and towns and aims to take this offering to 2,000 more towns by mid-next year. Fresh fruits and vegetables will be an integral part of the expansion, with the company investing in technology capabilities to ensure the highest and most stringent quality checks for the end consumer.

Flipkart is also working to bring efficiencies in the community e-grocery shopping model. The company has intensified its focus on partnering with farmer producer organisations to provide access to fresh produce, staples, pulses, and spices, bringing new revenue opportunities to farmer communities.

Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Co-founder, and CEO, Ninjacart, said, “Thanks to our employees, farmers, retailers, and all ecosystem players. The funds will enable us to dream beyond organizing the farmer-to-retailer ecosystem to a much larger goal of organizing the complete agri ecosystem and enabling transparent commerce. India is at a cusp of formalizing the agriculture industry, with the advent to better road connectivity, GST, seamless payments, digital infrastructure, etc. This opens up a tremendous opportunity to organize our agri ecosystem landscape like never before. We are investing in this huge potential to create value. The funds will be deployed to build world-class teams, scalable tech platforms to organise and grow the network.”

Ninjacart has been investing significantly in tech platforms and supply chain infrastructure over the past two years.

The company claims to have worked with over one lakh farmers across 150 villages to generate better revenues. Earlier this year, Ninjacart inked an MoU with the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare to strengthen the market linkages and promote best practices in the farming sector. The role of Ninjacart is to create and host the Agri Marketplace Platform (AMP), which will allow farmers to earn a fair price for their output, offer consumers better food and value to all the players to create value.

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