In a marketplace increasingly peppered by online grocery retail start-ups comes a new format, whose key differentiating feature is the delivery of fresh produce, as opposed to packaged food and grocery items, which form the mainstay of most grocery e-tailers.
VeggyKart.com, which launched its services in Gurgaon on June 1, is primarily a marketplace for handpicked fresh fruits and vegetables, in both whole and cut forms, delivered to consumers in slick, hygiene packages. However, it also offers other grocery essentials, including dairy products, snacks and beverages.
Co-founder and CEO Ravi Pahuja, who has drawn from his decade-long experience in retailing to create VeggyKart’s USPs, believes he has a winner on his hands due to the emphasis on product quality over rapid delivery promises. “We are not in the race to deliver in 60 minutes, 90 minutes and such. I would rather deliver great products in realistic time frames. With perishables such as fresh produce, freshness and quality are paramount for the consumer. We typically ask for a 120-150 minute gap between order and delivery,” he says.
Pahuja, who was previously COO of the Chokola dessert chain promoted by the Munjal family of HeroMoto Group, launched the format on self-generated seed capital, but confirms that the company received an initial burst of funding from an angel investor in April this year.
“We’ve spent the past 14 months perfecting our sourcing channels, back-end infrastructure and delivery mechanism, before going public,” he says. At a 5,000 sq ft warehouse in Gurgaon, fresh produce is brought in every day , with a sorting staff to manage hygiene and cut fruits and vegetables to meet orders for cut produce. “There are two levels of sorting,” Pahuja infoms. “One at the sourcing point, the Azadpur Sabzi Mandi itself, and the next at the warehouse to weed out even minimally damaged produce.”
Deliveries, which currently are limited to only Gurgaon, are executed on VeggyKart vans and bikes. Convinced about the immense scalability of the model, Pahuja is looking to expand the format’s reach to Delhi and Noida over the next few months. “The technological infrastructure and sourcing logistics are already in place. All we need to scale is to set up local warehouses and delivery infrastructure at local hubs,” he explains.
Must Read
