Sequoia-backed DailyNinja buys WakeupBasket in second acquisition

Hyperlocal delivery startup DailyNinja has acquired Hyderabad-based WakeupBasket in a cash-and-equity deal, a company statement said.

As per the deal, all WakeupBasket employees will join DailyNinja Delivery Services Pvt. Ltd. WakeupBasket founders Satendra Pratap and Sai Varaprasad will lead DailyNinja's Hyderabad team, the statement said. It didn't disclose financial details of the deal.

“Satendra and Sai are a dynamic duo with hands-on experience in scaling a similar model in Hyderabad. We thought they would be a great fit for our core team when we first met them and decided to go ahead with this acquisition,” said Anurag Gupta, co-founder of DailyNinja.

This is DailyNinja's second acquisition; it had bought Hyderabad-based 4amshop in August.

DailyNinja runs a grocery and milk delivery service. It operates both a marketplace and an inventory-led model, and earns revenue from subscriptions. DailyNinja was founded by BITS Pilani graduates Gupta and Sagar Yarnalkar in July 2015, who both previously started mobile services company Appspire Technologies.

The startup last raised funding in June. It secured $3 million (around Rs 20 crore) in a Series A funding round led by new investor Saama Capital. Existing investor Sequoia Capital had also put in money.

Besides Bengaluru, DailyNinja delivers in Hyderabad and Chennai as well. It fulfils 3,500 orders a day, the statement said.

WakeupBasket, operated by Crocksys Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded in 2015. It provides morning delivery of household essentials like DailyNinja, besides selling milk and groceries on its platform.

The Hyderabad-based startup had raised a seed round from various angel investors and has grown to fulfil 2,500 orders a day, the statement said.

Grocery delivery

Startups that offer grocery and milk as well as provide hyperlocal delivery services have seen increased investor interest lately.

In August, food-tech firm Swiggy acquired online startup Scootsy Logistics Pvt. Ltd, which delivers food, fashion apparel and accessories and home décor products in Mumbai.

In January, Gurgaon-based micro-delivery grocery startup Milkbasket raised $3 million (around Rs 19 crore) in funding from Unilever Ventures, the investment arm of consumer goods giant Unilever.

Doodhwala, a subscription-based milk and daily essentials delivery startup, secured $2.2 million (Rs 14.27 crore) from impact venture fund Omnivore in February.

Besides startups, homegrown e-commerce major Flipkart is gearing up to enter its grocery delivery service. It had announced the soft launch of its grocery delivery service under 'Supermart' in November 2017.