Indian B2B grocery marketplace carts $85m in series C money

Jumbotail, an India-based B2B ecommerce platform for food and groceries, has raised US$85 million in a series C round led by Artal Asia, an affiliate of the global equity investment firm Invus. Ajax Capital, the family office of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) entrepreneur Ajay Gupta, also participated in the round.

Photo credit: Jumbotail

Two executives from Invus – Francis Cukierman, managing director of Invus Asia, and Benjamin Felt, managing director of Invus US – will join Jumbotail’s board of directors following the round.

The fundraise, which is a combination of primary and secondary investments, also saw early investors Nexus Venture Partners and Kalaari Capital making part-exits by selling some of their shares via a secondary sale.

Jumbotail plans to use the fresh capital to triple its headcount across engineering, product, design, data science, finance, and other teams. It also aims to scale up its B2B marketplace to as many as 100 cities in the country.

The startup is looking to tap the dominance of offline kirana (mom and pop) stores in India’s food and grocery market, which it estimates to be worth over US$500 billion. Jumbotail connects nearly 2,000 brands and sellers of FMCG and staple foods with about 150,000 kirana stores. These stores are spread across 38 cities and towns in the country.

The company also offers a retail platform that helps kirana stores digitalize their in-store operations. The suite includes inventory management, real-time data, and merchandising insights, among others.

Jumbotail was founded by S Karthik Venkateswaran and Ashish Jhina in November 2015. It has raised US$125 million in funding to date.

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