Ninjacart, India’s colossal Agri marketing platform, leverage technology to solve one of the most robust supply chain problems. The agri-startup bridges vegetables and fruit farmers directly with businesses.
Ninjacart helps farmers get better prices and deal with consistent demand and also allows retailers to source fresh vegetables and fruits at competitive prices straight from farmers. The agri-tech runs the platform at lower cost, better speed, and larger scale through integrated supply chain aiding from technology, data science, logistics network, and infrastructure.
Genesis
Ninjacart incepted in May 2015 as hyper-local grocery delivery company by Co-founders, Ashutosh Vikram, Kartheeswaran k k, Sharath Loganathan, Thirukumaran Nagarajan, Vasudevan. Within six months of inception members of the startup decided to change their business model, focusing more on fixing the backend supply chain of vegetables and fruits. The main focus is to change the way kirana or grocery stores and supermarkets source their supply by minimizing waste.
‘Sabzi Mandi’ Affair
Sharath, alumni from IIM-Kozhikode happened to visit a market where he experienced an eye-opening impression looking at the darker side of the much-romanticized episode which shocked him to see the amount of vegetables and fruits dumped as waste. He recalls that market is total chaos and how people trampled over them and dumping of the waste. The team feels that it’s really hard, to sum up, how much food is lost and wasted in India.
The team feels there is a lot of inefficiencies almost from every aspect and lot of middlemen were involved in this. Another affecting factor is no price transparency. Involvement of a lot of hands in the process making the whole scenario change with the farmers.
The startup feels that if not tampered by specific methods there will be a tremendous change in the growth. With all these tapped scenarios and loopholes what the founders observed made them start the company as a tech-powered agri startup thus emerging into Ninjacart.
Technology as the source
Ninjacart ensures the produce reaches the clients effectively with an efficient price using tech-driven supply chain. The supply chain runs on the company’s in-house ERP. The supply chain what the team objects are to build unique to India and to develop an indigenous supply chain. A central data layer functions across the system just like a spinal cord. The data system feeds from different ancillary systems and similar to the real-time data to make decisions in real time. The data is made more readable and accessible to the complete organization through DIY-query systems. This is precisely because to give stakeholders access to the data they required.
Funding
Ninjacart raised a total of $49.5M funded by six investors. Syngenta Ventures and Accel are the leading investors and the lead investors. The total revenue of the company is estimated to be $1.8M.
Business Model
Ninjacart is a B2B agri tech company. The company’s primary target is to assist farmers in selling vegetables and fruits directly to the retailers and restaurants.
Competitors
Crofarm Agriproducts, Jumbotail, and LEAF are some of the leading contenders to Ninjacart.
Many agri startups emerged and operating well, but according to the organization, theirs is the only company which assures the delivery of quality goods within eight hours.
Slaying it like Ninjas
Ninjacart delivers nearly 300 tonnes in 3 cities with 800 employees.
The Agri startup helps farmers to take baby steps in changing the market production. They aim to reach out to 20,000+ farmers and assist new markets banking on tech platforms to reach out and communicate with farmers, operating on a daily basis.
The organization educates farmers about the exact market prices and discuss good varieties of seeds and best prices related to the market and the whole process.
Today, farmers as suppliers are able to sell their produce at a better price than the market firms like middleman exploits the production and a good deal of production. The farmers are paid immediately through bank transfer. Another evident fact of the startup is sending their vehicles to farmer locations to bring goods to their collection centers for free of cost.
Shopkeepers and restaurants reviews that they get fresh and good quality vegetables and fruits at their doorstep without visiting the market at competitive prices.
The step what these 5 ninjas took to bring change in the supply system is proving to change in every aspects. Hope the struggle what the startup is fighting for will see a change with the whole Indian market system.
