Grocery delivery startup Grofers acquires rival store to strengthen presence in Indian capital

Grofers, an online grocery delivery service that helps people buy from nearby offline retailers, today revealed that it has acquired a rival store named MyGreenBox. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Grofers is similar to Instacart in the US, which helps offline retailers to go online and connects them with customers in their locality. The startup’s Android app allows users and businesses to get their delivery done by just selecting a pickup and a drop location. It serves products across categories like groceries, bakeries, fresh produce, baby products, and pet food.

“MyGreenBox is one of the leaders in the space in Gurgaon [a suburb of capital city Delhi] with a team that has a proven track record of execution. Besides access to client base, the acquisition will be a good source of talent,” says Saurabh Kumar, co-founder of Grofers. MyGreenBox served about 200 orders per day. The site will shut down as all business is moved over to Grofers.

See: Amazon goes hyperlocal in India, taps mom-and-pop stores for speedy groceries

Grofers is backed by Tiger Global and Sequoia which invested US$10 million in series A round of funding. It has been able to achieve scale with a 90-minute local delivery service that has about 400 delivery boys. The acquisition will also help the company to build technology for backend to further accelerate delivery.

It has so far partnered with over 350 merchants across Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai and claims to process over 700 deliveries per day.

The startup competes with EkStop, another Mumbai-based e-grocery which was acquired by Indian conglomerate Godrej Nature’s Basket. It’s also up against large, multi-city online stores such as BigBasket and LocalBanya.