Bengaluru-based retail tech startup Gully Network said Thursday it has raised USD 1.2 million in pre-Series A round from Venture Catalysts, Inflection Point Ventures, and DFAN (Digital Futurists Angels Network).
Prior to this, the startup had raised its seed round of INR 50 million from Orios Venture Partners, which also participated in this round.
Founded in August 2019, IIT Madras and IIM Ahmedabad alumni Ajay Nain and Prateek Chaturvedi, Gully Network aims to build a tech-enabled and asset-light network of mid-size grocery stores under the brand “Gullymart” across major cities.
“We see that despite using multiple platforms for online sales, POS, supply, and loan, retailers still struggle with manual and inefficient day-to-day operations. Non-exclusive B2B apps have not gained loyalty from retailers,” Nain, founder and CEO, Gully Network, said in a statement. “We work exclusively with stores and tech-enable them in all possible ways. We have achieved our initial product-market fit and with this raise, we aim to scale to 100 stores.”
Gully Network partners with existing unbranded mid-size, stand-alone grocery stores and provides them a tech platform to automate their end-to-end operations, while taking care of their entire value chain.
It claims to help these offline retailers achieve better fulfillment rates and higher margins. Gully Network also plans to open new scalable income streams for these stores, in addition to their primary grocery business.
“A lot of incomplete tech players are available in the market which target small kirana shops,” said Apoorva Ranjan Sharma, co-founder and president of Venture Catalysts, a Mumbai-based incubator backed by angel investors.
The true potential of the mid-sized store market, however, is still untapped, he added. Gully Network, to that end, is targeting to create a niche in the USD 25 billion mid-sized store segment, it said.
Anup Jain, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners, believes Gully Network is India’s answer to America’s retail chain 7-Eleven or Family Mart in Southeast Asia.
Gully Network isn’t the only retail-tech startup to land check from investors of late. Last week, Mumbai-based B2B tech startup Arzooo raised USD 7.5 million in its Series A round led by American VC firms WRVI Capital and 3Lines Ventures. Set up by former Flipkart colleagues and IIT Kharagpur alumni, Arzooo offers a technology platform that powers its partner stores to buy consumer electronics at the best price.