Ecommerce company Flipkart and the United States based parent Walmart have jointly made their second investment amounting to about $30 million in fresh produce supply chain startup Ninjacart, a person in the know of the deal told ET. This will help the farm owners to reach directly to consumers.
In a statement, Flipkart and Walmart said that the investment would deepen their partnership with Ninjacart and would improve its offerings and enhance the customer experience.
The investment comes at a time when the online grocery sector has seen massive growth due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The entry of Reliance Industries’ JioMart has also spurred competition in the e-grocery space.
CEO of Flipkart Group Mr. Kalyan Krishnamurthy said that “The e-grocery market in India has seen tremendous growth over the past several months”.
He also said, “We will continue to make investments to offer the best products to our customers and support livelihoods and sustainable growth for local farmers, producers, and the supply chain ecosystem.”
The eCommerce company Flipkart, which has been a laggard in the grocery segment compared to its main rival Amazon, is using Ninjacart’s supply of fresh produce to power its online grocery service Supermart and hyper-local delivery service Flipkart Quick.
The American firm Walmart and e-commerce Flipkart first backed Ninjacart last year in December and has since then worked on a farm-to-fork pilot with the startup.
At the end of March During the lockdown, Ninjacart started deliveries of fresh produce to apartment complexes and also partnered with food delivery services to enable deliveries.
Indian firm Ninjacart also launched FoodPrint, a platform that allows traceability of all products on its platform to improve safety.
Thirukumaran Nagarajan, co-founder and CEO at Ninjacart said that “The fresh set of investments from Walmart and the Flipkart Group takes us one step closer to our vision of making food safe and accessible for the billion people and changing the way food reaches our plate”.
The company (Ninja Cart) said that “it will utilize the fresh capital to expand into new markets and build new offerings for emerging customer segments”.
Ecommerce Company Flipkart and American firm Walmart added that the deal is expected to be closed by the end of October 2020.
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