Jumbotail raises $8.5mn from Kalaari Capital, Nexus Venture Partners

Image: Shutterstock

Jumbotail, an online marketplace for food and grocery, founded by Stanford alumni S. Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina in November 2015, has raised $8.5mn from Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners.

For Nexus Venture Partners, this is the second round of funding into the company. It had earlier invested $2mn in the startup that serves thousands of wholesale customers such as kirana stores and Horeca businesses in Bangalore.

The funds raised will help the startup build cutting edge technologies and enhance operational capabilities to spruce up customer experience in the wholesale food and grocery sector.

The vision of the founders is to organise the food and grocery ecosystem in India using technology, data science and design. Jumbotail offers a wide selection of products including staples, spices, dry fruits, packaged foods, and FMCG products. Traders, manufacturers and brands can list their food, grocery and FMCG products on the Jumbotail marketplace, which is accessible to customers through a mobile app available in 4 languages - Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and English.

“Manufacturers and brands can instantly get direct access to thousands of retailers and institutional customers through the Jumbotail platform without needing to invest in expensive physical distribution networks,” said Ashish Jhina, Co-founder & COO, Jumbotail.

Bala Srinivasa, Partner, Kalaari Capital, added: “98 percent of India’s food and grocery consumption is via Kirana stores. Jumbotail brings tech-centric innovation to address massive inefficiencies in terms of product discovery, distribution costs, stock outs, and pricing.” Echoing the same sentiment, Sameer Brij Verma, Director, Nexus Venture Partners, said: “Jumbotail is going after a very large but inefficient market that requires very strong first-principles approach towards solving challenges across commerce, efficient fulfilment, payments and credit via their platform.” Nexus has partnered with the Jumbotail team since its very inception.