Aaidea Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which operates contactless delivery service and grocery startup Milkbasket, has raised $5.5 million (approximately Rs 41.82 crore at current exchange rates) in a fresh funding round.
The round was led by Inflection Point (IP) Ventures. Others that participated in the round include existing backers such as Blume Ventures, Kalaari Capital, Mayfield India, Unilever Ventures and the Singapore-based BeeNext.
The Gurugram-based company will use the funds to grow its operations across the country, Milkbasket said in a statement. “This is probably our last fund raise on our path to profitability – that we target to achieve in 2020,” Milkbasket founder Anant Goel said.
IP Ventures, which claims to be the only angel platform in the country to lead a Series B round in a company, has invested in several other startups this year, including DROR Labs, Edvizo Media, Pedagogy, Vogueme Technologies and Escrowffrr.
The development comes even as reports in the previous two months suggested that Milkbasket was in acquisition talks with bigger players in the space. In March, BigBasket was said to be in talks to acquire the firm. However, the negotiations reportedly stalled over valuation concerns.
Then, in April, it was reported that Milkbasket was in talks with Amazon India for a potential acquisition by the e-commerce giant.
Milkbasket was founded in 2015 by Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain and Yatish Talvadia. With a full-stack supply chain from sourcing to last-mile delivery, the company says it aims to service over a million households by next year.
Separately, IP Ventures founder and CEO Vinay Bansal said the company has managed to distinguish itself in the competitive grocery space through its lean delivery model and cost-efficient supply chain.
In July last year, the company said that it had acquired e-grocer PSR Supply Chain Services Pvt. Ltd, to strengthen its services in Bengaluru. In March, it had bought Noida-based online grocery venture Veggie India for an undisclosed amount.
In late June 2019, Milkbasket said it raised Rs 15 crore ($2.15 million then) in venture debt from InnoVen Capital. The development came after VCCircle reported in early June that Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal’s BAC Acquisitions had scrapped a proposal to invest Rs 20 crore ($2.86 million then) in Milkbasket.
Also in early June, Milkbasket had raised nearly Rs 73 crore ($10.5 million) in a fresh round of funding led by Unilever Ventures, the venture capital arm of consumer goods giant Unilever Plc. In December 2018, Milkbasket raised $7 million in an extended Series A round led by Mayfield. This was preceded by a $7 million Series A investment led by Kalaari Capital in May that year.
