Ninjacart: Revolutionizing the ‘sabzi mandi’ supply chain leveraging data

Do you remember how the local vegetable and fruit market in your neighborhood looks like? It will
be difficult to recall as we have not stepped outside our house for more than a year. But you can
imagine the wastage of vegetables in those markets.

India struggles with its position in the Global Hunger Index, 2020 (ranking 94 out of 107 countries),
and wastage of agricultural produce is one major reason. According to Financial Express, a whopping
16% of produced fruits and vegetables are wasted every year. This is due to various problems in
supply chain management.

Ninjacart: Inception and journey till now

To tackle the problem of agricultural produce wastage, Thirukumaran Nagarajan, along with his
friends, started Ninjacart. At first, they wanted to solve the problem by helping retailers take their
inventory online and delivering in less than 60 minutes from ordering.

But soon they encountered different problems in this business model,

Customers were unwilling to pay a premium price for just the convenience of ordering online.

Supply chain issues crept up with the inability to track real-time demand and manage inventory.

With all these problems, the team realized that while there was a demand for the service, the supply
side had many inefficiencies associated with it to fulfill it. Hence, they decided to pivot from the
demand side to the supply side and build a fast B2B supply chain for agricultural produce leveraging
data.

According to Inc42 Analysis on India’s Agritech Landscape, the addressable market opportunity in
2020 was $ 24.1 Bn out of which only $ 204 Mn was tapped (~1% of the overall potential was
tapped). This gives us a view of what Ninjacart and other agritech startups can achieve in the future.

The startup was founded in 2015 in Bangalore, India. The last funding round (series C) happened in
October 2020, in which Ninjacart raised $ 49.7 Mn with a valuation of $ 503 Mn. The total funding till
now is $ 213 Mn. Ninjacart’s revenues stood at $ 59.1 Mn as of December 2019.

The company has grown significantly since its inception. In 2016, Ninjacart was handling only 7
tonnes a day, and now the daily volume is close to 1400 of vegetables and fruits from farm to
retailers in just less than 12 hours and serves around 17000+ retailers across 7 major cities in India –
Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, and Delhi. And, they have been doing
this with a delivery accuracy of 99.88 percent all year round. What business model makes Ninjacart
so successful?
Ninjacart Business Model

Ninjacart deals with the problem of inefficiencies in the supply chain by connecting farmers with
retailers and trying to remove the middlemen benefitting all the stakeholders in the process
(farmers, retailers and customers).
Farmers are directly connected with the retailers, helping them get better deals. Simultaneously
retailers are able to get fresh produce which helps them to serve their customers.

According to the co-founder and CEO, Thirukumaran Nagarajan, one of the biggest problems they
have encountered is farmers not getting a fair price for their products. They are trying to solve this
problem by implementing a supply chain that leverages data, technology, and a logistics network
built from scratch as solutions like this don’t exist in the market.

Ninjacart Creating a data-enabled supply chain

Thirukumaran Nagarajan and the team did not have the expertise in the supply chain, and in
hindsight, that was a blessing in disguise. This helped them to create a supply chain solution
blending data and technology tailored for India.

With this
model,
Ninjacart
was able
to supply
fresh
produce to
the
retailers
and
customers
with
hygiene
and
quality.
There are specific problems that Ninjacart addressed with their data-enabled supply chain -

 End-to-end traceability on the supply chain: Every box or cart in the CC’s, FC’s, and DC’s at
Ninjacart has RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags attached. This has led to a strong
brand establishment and continued trust.
 Forecasting demand: Ninjacart’s long-term vision is to improve efficiency in the supply chain
and reduce wastage in transit. For this, they have beautifully used technology such as Data
Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning to forecast demands. Their predictive
model takes many factors not limited to historical data, future expectation, weather forecast
data to predict weekly numbers at SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) levels to minimize errors as far
as possible. This is the reason they have been able to maintain a 0.2% – 0.3% error rate for
the past six years.
 Educating farmers about the expectation: Using the technology and data available, Ninjacart
educates them on the expectation which benefits both the parties (farmers on the prices
and amounts to harvest and Ninjacart to reduce wastage)
Grassroot level supply chain innovations and Awards

Over the years, the B2B agritech startup has been refining and innovating processes on a grassroot
level to optimize their efficiency. These might seem trivial but have given them great results.

To reduce the time at the stops, the employees don’t wait for the boxes to be emptied. The carts are
picked up when vehicles are returning after making the drop. Since the carts are RFID tagged, it
doesn’t have to go to the same distribution center

Ninjacart has adopted the use of “dolleys” instead of traditional methods which helps them load and
unload the boxes in the fulfillment centers

With these innovations and creating a robust data-enabled supply chain, Ninjacart has won many
awards in the agritech category.

Increasing brand visibility with social impact: A win-win

While the startup has aced the game of building technology and data enabled supply chain, there is
another initiative taken by Ninjacart which shows how great business can create a huge social
impact. In 2020 when the whole world struggled with a pandemic caused by the deadly Coronavirus,
Ninjacart stepped up to solve the problem of their comrades, the farmers of India.
As the whole country went into lockdown, local vegetable and grocery stores also got closed. This
affected the farmers a lot. To solve this problem, Ninjacart launched an initiative named HTF
(Harvest the Farms), where the customers could directly buy from the farmers at a cheaper price.

With the help of their technology-enabled processes, Ninjacart identified the excess produce and
buy it from the farmers at a price that covered their cost. Then it sold those produce to customers at
a lower price to reduce the wastage. This has definitely put Ninjacart on everybody’s radar and the
team deserves brownie points for quick thinking and creating a beautiful solution to tackle the
problems of the nation’s backbone, the farmers.

Promising and exciting future of unique business model of Ninjacart

Reduction of agricultural produce wastage has always been on the forefront of Ninjacart’s vision.
But, along the way the team realized that food safety is a bigger problem. In 2018, the startup
adopted the vision of providing “Safe food for one billion”.

Ninjacart aims to provide “zero residue food” (having a low maximum residue limit (MRL)) and has
started to invest in technology. The startup has beautifully divided into four different steps and
named them FoodPrint, FarmPrint, ResiduePrint, Affordability.

They have already launched FoodPrint on World food safety day (June 7, 2020) to better view the
whole supply chain and trace where the produce is coming from.

The startup is currently working on the beta phase of developing FarmPrint, which will help them get
nearer to producing zero residue food. Leveraging technology, they will be able to monitor the
whole process better.

ResiduePrint is in its early stage of development, and the startup is trying to make the solutions
durable and scalable.

A startup with an aim to create a strong societal impact, we are eager to witness the business and
technological prowess that the Ninajcart team displays in the future.

Business Model of Rivigo – Humanizing the logistics

Covid came, and we finally realized the importance of Supply chains. Along with frontline warriors
like doctors, police force, hospital, and support staff; truck drivers are unsung heroes in this
pandemic. Everything stopped; offices, malls, restaurants, entertainment centers; however, the
supply of essential goods continued even so. But, even after this selfless service, do the truck drivers
get the deserved respect from society?

The answer is ‘NO.’ Not even a single kid aspires to be a truck driver in his childhood. Moreover,
truck drivers themselves do not want their kids to become truck drivers. As per a survey by Save Life
Foundation, 84% of truck drivers respondents would not recommend the profession to a family
member. Because of this, the supply of truck drivers is reducing day by day.

The key issue is drivers spending months away from their families. Moreover, parents are unwilling
to marry their daughters off to truck drivers. They (truck drivers) are almost an outcast.
Realizing these real issues, Deepak Garg, McKinsey alumnus, came up with the company Rivigo. It is
based on the Relay Trucking model. This unique solution solves the truck driver’s shortage while
helping drivers maintain a healthy work-life balance by allowing them to be at their home every day.
The model also helps shorten the delivery time and increase truck efficiency. Let’s try to understand
the Business Model of Rivigo.

Concept of Rivigo Relay Business Model:

In this business model of Rivigo, the truck drivers work in shifts, handing over the truck to the next
driver at designated pit stops along the route. Having handed over the truck, the driver then takes
the wheel of another truck to make the return journey so that he is back at his home stop by the end
of the day.

This process also increases trucking efficiency by higher utilization of trucks. Rivigo has created a
network of over 70 pit stops over the country. This approximately translates to a driving distance of
around 250 km or around 5 hrs of driving time between pitstops.

The truck driver gets a duty alert on his phone. He reaches the pitstop and scans the unique QR
code. The incoming truck driver has already got an alert on his app as to which truck driver the truck
is to be hand over to. In addition to tech exchange through QR codes, there is a checklist regarding
trucks and shipments’ conditions that need to be verified through the app.

The Business model of Rivigo is based on the best use of technology. Rivigo also has IoT-enabled
trucks with conditions of trucks being monitored in real-time. This monitoring not only helps in
reducing breakdowns but also in increasing the trust of clients.

Moreover, if a refrigerated truck takes fresh fruits or fish, the client can see that the temperature is
maintained. This transparency is high-value addition amongst the clients of supply chain logistics.

RaaS: Relay-As-A-Service of Rivigo

The co-founder of Rivigo, Gazal Kalra, told YourStory in an interview that RaaS aims to offer the
benefits of relay trucking to millions of fleet owners in India while bringing efficiencies in the logistics
industry. The mission of Rivigo is to make logistics in India more humane, efficient and RaaS is one
step in that direction.
Surge cargo logistics, a client of Rivigo, shares that 25-30 percent extra running per month per truck
was achieved through RaaS, compared to using their own resources. The use of tech in all aspects of
operations (fuel, maintenance) is also helping the client see the areas of concern in their trucks.

Patent and Funding

Rivigo, in July 2019 had announced that it had been granted patent rights by the United States
Patent and Trademark Office for its unique driver relay model that uses algorithms to determine the
availability of drivers for trucks.

The patented system of Rivigo uses the technology of an intelligent driver allocation system to pick
the right driver for duty. The selection is based on many parameters like an equal distribution of
driving hours, rest hours, and transit hours. The algorithm also considers driver performance basis
on parameters like driving behavior, fuel usage, etc.

According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Rivigo raised a Series F funding round of INR 141.97
Cr ($20 Mn) from SAIF Partners and Spring Canter Investment Ltd in late 2019. Out of this, INR
141.97 Cr, Spring Canter invested 83.18 Cr while SAIF Partners invested 58.7 Cr. Rivigo said in its
filings that it plans to use the funding towards capital expenditure.

In 2019, Rivigo also launched the National Freight Index (NFI) to bring transparency to the largely
unorganized logistics sector. It provides fleet owners and logistics decision-makers unrestricted
access to freight rate information and trends.

Challenges Rivigo Business Model Can Face with Autonomous vehicles

Fully automated trucks are commercially viable only if they improve both cost and safety
considerably. However, the biggest challenge for fully automated trucks is the availability of data
and training capabilities.

It is a herculean task to replace a human driver for all possible weather conditions and road
conditions. A more amazing thing would be to see how autonomous trucks interact with humans
and other non-autonomous trucks. This culminates in predicting every single thing around the truck
with extremely high accuracy.

This then translates to the need for data of trillions of real driven miles. Also, with the unimaginable
amount of data, the cost of servers makes it all more difficult to put fully autonomous vehicles in
practice.

Conclusion

Rivigo aims to scale by offering Relay as a Service (RaaS) to fleet owners, who find it difficult to get
truck drivers and make their trucks efficient. In the next five years, Rivigo aims to run 30,000 to
50,000 trucks in the relay ecosystem. It also aims to put the next technology on IoT sensors and
manage the fleet of fleet owners. The founder, Deepak Garg envisions changing the lives of more
than 1,00,000 truck drivers by the year 2024.
 Selling 50 lakh samosas a year, Samosa Party is dressing up the humble snack with a sprinkle of
tech, and it's working

Building a brand out of an established entity is audacity. But then, startups are audacious. Some live
to tell the tale while for others, there's always tomorrow.

Thus when someone tells you they are giving the humble samosa — a symbol of India's street food
— a facelift, one wonders. That’s what Co-founders Amit Nanwani and Diksha Pande hope to achieve
with their startup Samosa Party — dress up the popular snack using tech.

As someone who has spent her corporate career in the F&B industry from the Oberoi Group to Pizza
Hut to Chai Point, Diksha not only has a deep understanding of her subject matter but has always
been curious about consumer behaviours and the opportunities these present.

She noticed there weren’t any large-scale QSR brands of local snacks. “Even in small towns, it is easy
to find branded burgers and pizzas, but if one wanted local snacks, people relied upon their
neighbourhood halwais and shops,” she says.

With Samosa Party, the co-founders want to create a differentiated experience for the urban
millennial customers who value convenience, hygiene, and quality even if they have to pay extra.

“Today we have changed how samosas are consumed. You order online and it gets delivered in 30
minutes. The overall behaviour and accessibility have all changed. The millennials are brand savvy
and want value for their money, which means they know whenever they order from us they will get
hot and crisp samosas without having to specifically make the trip to the shop,” she says.

Diksha was speaking at the just concluded Brands of India event organised by YourStory.

A D2C brand experience

What started as a single takeaway store in Bangalore serving eight to nine varieties of samosas is
today available across 15 locations in the city, as well as online on food delivery marketplaces and its
own website.

The D2C brand records 50,000 orders per month, and its customers consume close to 50 lakh
samosas a year. “More than 80 percent of our customers are repeat customers,” Diksha says.

The startup is growing profitably and launched in Gurgaon in April this year, “but with the second
COVID wave hitting immediately, we were unable to do much there”, she adds.

As they say, any publicity is good publicity. A few weeks ago a Gurgaon customer’s tweet
admonishing startups to keep tech away from his favourite snack went viral and brought the focus
on the startup. The reason for his ire was a code embossed on the Samosa Party samosa’s crust.

Tech in samosa
“The code on his samosa was C&C, which indicates the filling in the samosa is of chicken and cheese.
Since we have 14 varieties of fillings, we would receive a lot of feedback from our online customers
on the difficulty in identifying the different fillings,” Diksha says.

To solve this customer problem, they inscribe the name of the filling on the samosa. “We also put
numbers that are codified with respect to which batch they have come out from. So, it also solves
our problem of keeping the batch codes and follow the first-in-first-out method,” she adds, stating
technology cannot stay from anything these days.

This strategy to solve a genuine customer problem has also become a branding exercise for the
startup. “People see the inscription and know that it is a Samosa Party samosa,” Diksha says.

Keeping with their brand proposition, they also introduced the bucket samosa on the lines of bucket
chicken wings. “Samosas by their definition are meant to be shared. Today, most of our social
occasions are at home, thus introducing the cocktail samosa bucket was in keeping with the
shareable experience,” says Diksha.

Consumer shift

“India’s QSR market is expected to clock a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent between
2021 and 2025 as large food services chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s, among
others deepen their reach in India’s smaller cities, and benefit from a younger demographic,” a
report by Edelweiss Securities released early this year noted.

The report also pointed to the fact that COVID was “an enabler boosting preference for QSR as
consumers shifted to familiar brands.”

Riding the tailwinds, Indian brands like Chai Point and Chaayos, including Samosa Party’s direct
competitor Samosa Singh, have all benefited from this shift in consumer behaviour and the rise in
demand for Indian snacks to be made available as conveniently and hygienically as other branded
fast food.

“It is always a good thing to have competition as that helps the overall category do better,” says
Diksha, adding, “it is a very big market. As long as you give a good product consistently, the demand
will always be there.”

She maintains that as a startup, they keep a close eye on their unit economics. “From day one, we
wanted to have full end-to-end control on both the backend and front end,” she states. The startup
runs its own kitchen, and the takeaway offline stores are managed efficiently in terms of staff and
vendors.

“We are not cost-conscious as we are quality-conscious. It’s a long haul. Building a food brand is not
something you can do in a year,” she says.

The startup raised an undisclosed Pre-Series A round from Inflection Point Ventures last year and is
now looking to raise a larger round to scale to a few more cities.

“We are in the growth phase and are taking a more delivery-first approach for now because of
COVID. Eventually, we want to build a brand that can be felt, seen, and experienced across all
channels,” states Diksha.
When the brain hits you right, you think of wonderful ideas, one of the brain hitting ideas in the
history of startups in India is Delhivery. Proving themselves since 2011 as a great startup, this
company is now like a backbone for the logistics industry.

The pillar of the Indian e-commerce industry is somehow logistics, which Delhivery is leading
precisely to being a huge fundraiser for the industry. It offers a full suite of services such as last-mile
delivery, third-party and transit warehousing, reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-
warehouse, and vendor-to-customer shipping, and more.

Delhivery became a Unicorn in 2019 when it raised $413 million in a Series F round led by SoftBank
Vision Fund, Carlyle Group and Fosun International. It was then valued at $1.5 billion. Currently,
Delhivery is valued over $3 Bn.

Delhivery - About and How it Works

Delhivery offers a full suite of services such as last-mile delivery, third-party and transit warehousing,
reverse logistics, payment collection, vendor-to-warehouse, and vendor-to-customer shipping, and
more. The company is backed by Times Internet Ltd, which had acquired a minority stake in the firm
in June last year.

Having three responsibilities on shoulders that are fulfillment, omni-channel, and data services, the
company’s focus is to deliver the best service without any waste chances of solving customer’s
problem.

It provides products and services intending to build trust and improve the lives of consumers, small
businesses, enterprises, and their growing team of employees and partners. They are disrupting
India’s logistics industry through their proprietary network design, infrastructure, partnerships, and
engineering and technology capabilities.

Delhivery brings unparalleled cost efficiency and pan-India reach to the businesses of over 10,000
customers. It is driven by its mission to shrink time and distance, making the world a smaller place
for its customers and over a billion consumers they serve. A very normal company that did a very
abnormal business, gaining a beautiful profit and becoming a huge success, It is the new phase of
delivering items.

They aim to compete as India’s largest and most profitable fulfillment company for e-commerce.
Having the 3 categories of customers for their company, Delhivery is constantly aiming to provide
them the good quality products with better improvement every day and with trust.

Delhivery - Founders/Owners and Team

Delhivery was started by a bunch of engineers including Bhavesh Manglani, Kapil Bharati, Mohit
Tandon, Sahil Barua, and Suraj Saharan.

Sahil, Suraj, and Mohit were day job men having a great aspiration to start their own venture, but
they knew that it takes a lot to have a successful startup. All three men worked in Bain & Co in 2008
but two of them Suraj and Mohit worked at the management consulting arm of the company.

“We didn’t have the faintest idea what we were going to do. We decided to quit on one fact, we
realized there is only so much you can learn in consulting, and grow,” says Sahil.

They took a huge furlough together for 6 months that is when they decided to give up their jobs and
started working for their dreams.
Bhavesh Mangalin (COO) is the co-founder of Delhivery. He successfully has 3 years of experience at
telecom companies like Idea cellular and reliance communication and 18 months of misc startups,

Kapil Bharti (CTO) graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi), joined the two genius
minds later to complete their dreams as well as to make all of them grow rich in their business.

Besides these great minds, some of the important sectors are managed by another core team of
three members-

Aveek Nandi (Director, product design and strategy)

Deepak Dhyani (Vice President at Delhivery)

Sandeep Barasia (Joint MD at Delhivery).

This wonderful startup company started with five employees and now it’s standing on its own as an
organization employing more than 17,000 people, with a presence in more than 13+ countries.

Delhivery - Target Market Size

The country's logistics industry which is worth around USD 160 billion is likely to touch USD 215
billion in the next two years with the implementation of GST.

And here comes the biggest reach of Delhivery that is, they have approximately 1400 pin codes on
their list and over 19,990 sq ft of warehouse space in Delhi as well as in Bangalore. Delivery has a lot
of partners with whom they partnered to increase their product reach and to cope up with those
partners, the company also offers third party warehousing and transit warehousing to its partners.

To increase the quality of the products delivered by Delhivery, Suvayu Ali, (Data Scientist at
Delhivery) kept a special check on the market of these technical matters with an algorithm which is
one of the projects that a team of data scientists at Delhivery, led by former entrepreneur and
Facebook data scientist Santanu Bhattacharya is working on.

The very special achievement of Delhivery is that they are now in 13+ cities already which made this
business easier to raise more funds for the company. The target of this company is to have branches
in over 250+ cities by the end of this fiscal year.

How was Delhivery Started?

It was approximately half-past at night when Suraj and Sahil ordered food from a nearby restaurant
in Gurgaon. When they had the delivery man standing in front of their door, they got chatty with the
delivery person. And they both decided to talk to the manager of the store, soon they were at the
restaurant, talking to the owner. The owner explained his problem that why it happened, the fact is
Sahil and Suraj knew the solution and that is when Delhivery started.

Delhivery - Business Model and Revenue Model

Delhivery has become India’s leading supply chain services company. It is one of the India's largest
B2B & C2C Logistic Courier Service Provider. Delhivery charges Lowest/economical shipping rates for
providing its service. There are no No Setup Fee or Subscription Charges!

The services offered by Delhivery can be divided into 3 primary departments

Warehousing - Flexible warehousing across 40+ cities in India

Transportation - Largest pan-India reach across 19000+ pin codes and 2500+ cities

Commerce - Ready integration with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento & Opencart.

Delhivery - Growth and Revenue

The company initially was a small business of only 5 members in total for all their work from
accounts to product service to delivery hookups, but as the time passed this company hired more
than 15,000 people as their deliverymen, accounts keeper and to keep their customers satisfied if
there is any issue in the product or same.

The company claims to have a turnover of INR 2800 crore for FY2020 and have plans to reach INR
6000 - INR 7000 crore in the next two years

As of 2020, Delhivery delivers around 1.5 million order/day in over 17,500 pin codes in India across
2,300 towns and cities. It is mainly because of its network of nearly 7,000 drivers and over 5,000
trucks. Delhivery is also building some of the Country's Largest Trucking Terminals at key locations in
Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai.

The company culture aims at making every individual experience working in trenches as a delivery
boy, for at least twelve hours a week, to promote teamwork and efficiency of the employees.

Delhivery - Funding and Investors

Delhivery has raised a total of $1.39B in funding over 14 rounds. The
last round of the company came in on September 24, 2021, led by
Addition. This has helped it raise around $125 million. The company also
witnessed funds equal to Rs 558 crores ($76.34 million) in the previous
round dated September 6, 2021. The Series I round of funding was also
led by Lee Fixel's Addition LLC.

Here is a list of all the funding rounds of Delhivery:

Date Stage Amount Investors

September 24, $125
- Lee Fixel's Addition LLC
2021 million
September 6, $76.34
Series I Lee Fixel's Addition LLC
2021 million
$100
July 16, 2021 - FedEx Express
million
$277
May 30, 2021 Series H Fidelity Investments
million
December 15, Secondary
$25 million Steadview Capital
2020 Market
September 9, Secondary $115 Canada Pension Plan Investment
Date Stage Amount Investors
2019 Market million Board
Secondary $150 Canada Pension Plan Investment
June 17, 2019
Market million Board
$413 SoftBank Vision Fund, Carlyle Group,
March 24 2019 Series F
million Fosun International
May 22, 2017 Series E $30 million Fosun International
$100
March 23, 2017 Series E Carlyle Group, Tiger Global, Fosun
million
May 6, 2015 Series D $85 million Tiger Global Management
September 8, Multiples Alternate Asset Management
Series C $35 million
2014 Private Limited
September 30,
Series B $5 million Nexus Venture Partners
2013
April 2012 Series A $1.5 million Times Internet Limited

The logistics giant has allotted 146,961 Series I Compulsory Convertible Preference shares (CCPS) to
Addition LLC valued at Rs 37, 900 per share, according to the MCA filings of the brand as of
September 6, 2021.

Delhivery is eyeing an IPO round of around $1 billion and will likely file its Draft Red Herring
Prospectus this month, as per the reports dated October 7, 2021. Furthermore, the company has
already received approval from its shareholders to turn into a public entity and will be soon
converted from Delhivery Private Limited to Delhivery Limited.

Delhivery - Name, Tagline, Logo

True to its tagline- 'Changing the world, one shipment at a time', Delhivery is changing the logistics
market with a new strategy every day.

Delhivery - Competitors

As Delhivery is a logistics company, and obviously, Delhivery thrives amidst huge market competition
from some of the companies like Ecom Express, DotZot, FSC (Future Supply Chain), BlackBuck, Delex,
Delivery.com, etc.

It is because of the competition in the market that customers get different choices, and all of them
more or less closely match each other when it comes to the quality.

Delhivery - Acquisitions

Delhivery, which is eyeing the filing of its Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP), has already issued
bonus shares to shareholders. The logistics and supply chain startup held an extraordinary general
meeting (EGM) on September 29, where it has announced that it would allot fully paid up 1.68 Cr
bonus shares worth INR 10, to equity shareholders. This will be in the ratio of 9:1.

According to Delhivery’s regulatory filings, as accessed by Inc42, the logistics unicorn has allotted
1,68,46,803 shares of INR 10 each fully paid up — taking the total number of shares from 18,71,868
to 1,87,18,670 bonus shares, which will be allotted to 90 existing equity shareholders of the
company.
With around 12.29 Lakh bonus shares allotted, Founder Sahil Barua boasts of having the highest
shares when it comes to the founders of the startup. The other shareholders include Times Internet
and CPPIB, which were allotted 28.53 Lakh and 23.80 Lakh shares respectively, which is the highest
that the investors of the company got.

Furthermore, the company also decided to expand its employee stock option plans (ESOP) pool,
which will be overlooking its $1 Bn-IPO. It will now be allotting 9,545 shares (INR 2,895 each) valued
at INR 2.84 Cr to 12 of its employees. The startup has previously allotted around 11,614 shares
valued at $126.6K to its employees in 2019.

Delhivery - Future Plans

As of June 2021, Delhivery is all set to launch its first IPO in 2022. Also, Delhivery will continue to
aggressively invest in building trucking infrastructure and is planning to invest up to Rs 300 crore in
next 24 months to expand its fleet size. The company will plan its IPO soon, which would be valued
at $1 billion, according to the reports dated August 25, 2021.

The company claims to have a turnover of Rs 2800 crore for FY2020 and have plans to reach Rs 6000
- Rs 7000 crore in next two years.
With exponential growth in the number of internet and smartphone users in India, turning online to
get one's tasks done is now mainstream. Education too falls under this umbrella. Online tutoring has
many benefits such as economical courses, flexible schedules, and 24/7 access to get doubts and
queries cleared. This has made online learning popular among all age groups. upGrad, a Mumbai-
based startup, is bringing the best out of the online education segment.

upGrad has tied up with world-class institutes to facilitate access to career-oriented courses and
assist Indian students and working professionals who want to upgrade their careers. With the last
funding round of August 9, 2021, of $40 million, led by Temasek Holdings, IFC, and IIFL, upGrad's
valuation crossed $1.2 billion and made it the third unicorn in the Edtech space.

upGrad - Company Highlights

Startup Name upGrad
Headquarters Mumbai
Ronnie Screwvala, Mayank Kumar, Phalgun Kompalli, and
Founders
Ravijot Chugh
Sector EdTech
Founded 2015
Networth $1.2 Bn Valuation (August 2021)
Revenue $ 21.95 Million (INR 163 crores) in FY20
Parent
UpGrad Education Pvt. Ltd
Organization
Website upGrad.com

UpGrad Team and Workforce

upGrad has a workforce of over 2,000 employees and has plans to add another 1000 employees in
FY 21. The company has recently strengthened its senior leadership team to capitalize on potential
opportunities in the online education sector.

The company has appointed Tanya Ahluwalia as the Vice President – Brand Marketing while Rahul
Karthikeyan will head Digital Marketing. Tanya brings 18 years of experience to the table by working
with leading organizations such as Coca-Cola, BBlunt, Nike, Unilever, and Delta Corp. Rahul has been
in the marketing and advertising industry for the last 11 years in different capacities. He was the
head of Digital Performance for the West Region at Wavemaker and has worked with leading brands
such as Vodafone, Eureka Forbes, NMIMS, and Flipkart.

In April 2019, Kushal Dev Kashyap, former senior manager ( Business Development) at BYJU's joined
upGrad as Associate Director of Business Development. In May 2019, Abhishek Arora joined upGrad
as the Chief Business Officer – Consumer Business.

Since its inception, the post of Chief Executive Officer was vacant. In March 2020, upGrad appointed
Arjun Mohan as its CEO for India operations. Formerly CBO (Chief Business Officer) at BYJU's, Mohan
has over a decade of experience in the edtech sector. Besides BYJU's, Mohan also worked with Titan
Industries, Tata Motors, Tata Realty and Infrastructure Ltd (TRIL), and Sir Dorabji Tata and Allied
Trusts.

upGrad - Work Culture

upGrad’s vision revolves around ‘building careers of tomorrow’. The learning experience it delivers is
at the core of its business. The upGrad team constantly strives for excellence and has a high degree
of passion and pride in whatever it does. Some of the main highlights of upGrad's work culture are:

It is committed to building careers of tomorrow: People working with the company have a sense of
job satisfaction and a feeling of doing something special since their contribution has the power to
improve the customer/learner’s life and career.

It supports innovation: As an edtech company, upGrad believes that technology is the future. That's
why the employees are constantly motivated to take up innovative initiatives across various
functions.

Open culture: The leadership team is highly approachable, the structure is flat, and employees are
encouraged to take up initiatives.

Promote Upskilling: Being a company that endorses upskilling, upGrad spurs its employees to take
up its courses at discounted rates for staying relevant with changing times.

Encourage transparency and creative thinking: A young organization with an employee strength of
400+ and the average age of its workforce being 28, upGrad is ready to push boundaries in the field
of education.

The key traits of upGrad's work culture are centered on:

 Long term thinking with clinical execution.

 Empathy and impact.
 Accountability and ownership.
 Delivering excellence.

upGrad - Business Model And Revenue Model

upGrad is largely a direct B2C company wherein the consumer enrolls in the program (post receiving
an admit) and pays upfront for the enrollment. For its enterprise business, the company receives
payment from companies for training their employees.

upGrad’s program pricing reflects its commitment towards getting students placed. 50% of the
program fees are collected from the learner only if they get placed after the program's completion.
This pricing strategy is the first of its kind in India.

upGrad - Funding And Investors

upGrad's founders provided the initial funding. The first phase of the investment went in to build the
learning experience, product, content, and pedagogy. The second phase of the investment is meant
for creating larger awareness amongst consumers and corporate entities.
In August 2020, upGrad Raised INR 50 Crores ($6.8 Million) Debt From IIFL Income Opportunities
Fund (owned by IIFL Asset Management Limited, an India-focused global asset management firm). It
aims to acquire edtech firms in 2021.

upGrad raised $40 Million from World Bank’s IFC and $120 Million in funding from Temasek in the
company’s first external funding round. The valuation of upGrad has reached $850 Million.

upGrad achieved unicorn status with the latest fundraise coming on August 9, 2021, where the
company was backed by Temasek, International Finance Corporation, and IIFL. The company is now
valued at $1.2 Bn. With this latest round, Ronnie Screwvala's company has now turned to be the
third unicorn this year in the Edtech space, after Byju's and Unacademy.

According to the reports, the company is in advanced talks for raising another $400 Mn and eyeing a
valuation of $4 Bn soon.

The company is aiming to achieve revenue worth $2 Billion by 2026.

upGrad - User Acquisition

For the first 100 customers, upGrad used several offline events to promote its initiative. The
founders personally spoke to the learners. Prospective learners had to share their video profiles and
SOPs (Statement of Purpose) before enrolling. They were then given 2 weeks of learning content for
free. Only after experiencing the free content was the payment option made available to them.

The approach of attracting consumers also included partnerships with entrepreneurship-focused

publications to spread the word around. For increasing the customer base, they focused on some
subject-specific channels to attract learners. It partnered with universities to launch the next set of
programs. Those partnerships also helped scale the existing programs.

upGrad has tie-ups with the following educational institutes:

International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-B).

Birla Institute of Technology and Science.

Pilani (BITS Pilani).

MICA.

Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE).

Cambridge Judge Business School.

Institute of Management Technology (IMT Ghaziabad).

HDFC Life for insurance-related courses.

IIT Madras, for certification course on Machine Learning and Cloud.

In 2019, upGrad unveiled its first ad campaign featuring actor Vicky Kaushal. The film breaks the
myth of online education being ineffective by showcasing how impactful the online education space
is and that it is as good as traditional offline education.

The second campaign was based on the insight that Indian working professionals are in a state of
inertia where they feel that they do not need to go back to learning once they have a job. These
films ought to make customers realize that they have no choice but to learn and upskill themselves
to remain relevant in today’s day and time. The campaigns shed light upon upGrad's unique online
power learning approach and demonstrated its influence along with the role it can play in the
positive transformation of an individual's career. It further intends to establish the fact that in this
fast-changing world of technology, new-age skills at the workplace are coveted and that upskilling is
a necessity.

upGrad - Startup Challenges

Like all businesses, upGrad encountered multiple challenges. The most significant one was the
stigma surrounding the credibility of online education. There is a general perception that online
education is frivolous. upGrad had to prove otherwise through its product, customer experience, and
success stories; and this was a tough job.

Getting recruiters to accept that online education could be as rigorous as offline education was the
next hurdle. Finally, when it came to product pricing, upGrad priced itself at a discount to offline
competitors, but at a premium to other online competitors. It was an uphill task to explain the value
proposition of the programs to the learners.

upGrad - Acquisitions

upGrad has acquired Impartus for Rs. 150 crores ( $20.6 Million). Impartus is a video-learning
solutions provider which is now a complete subsidiary of upGrad.

upGrad acquired Acadview Software in 2018, thereby venturing into the college education space.
Before this, the company had acquired Pyoopil Education Technologies, a mobile-based SaaS
(Software- as- a- service) product used by companies to deploy online training in 2016. In 2019,
upGrad acquired CohortPlus, India’s largest and most active community on product management
and data science.

upGrad acquires KnowledgeHut, short-term skilling and training courses startup on August 3, 2021.

upGrad - Revenue And Growth

In the last few years, upGrad's gross revenue has increased manifold. It witnessed a 113% jump in its
gross revenue from INR 57 crores( $7.8 million) in FY18 to INR 121 crores ( 16.7 Million) in FY19. The
company's total revenue increased to INR 163 Crores ( $ 22.4 Million) in FY20. The company has
achieved an Annual Revenue Run rate (ARR) of INR 1200 Crore ( $165.4 Million). The plan is to grow
by international expansion and strategic acquisitions in 2021 and 2022. Furthermore, the company is
also planning to achieve a revenue run rate of $500 million by the end of March 2022.
upGrad has been on an upward trajectory since its inception and has so far empowered the careers
of over 300,000 working professionals in India. In 2019, the company reached the 1250 "careers
transition" mark.

In a short span of around 5 years, this startup on-boarded over 21,500 paid learners and has
impacted more than 370K individuals globally, making it India’s largest online higher-education
company based on gross revenue generated from the Indian market in FY18-19.

In the period when the impact of COVID-19 was at its peak, upGrad onboarded over 100 colleges
and universities onto its platform to pave the way for blended online learning as the future of
education.

For the month of June 2020, upGrad reported Gross Student Revenue of INR 50 crores per month.
That will tend to grow to INR 100 crores per month by September 2020. It aims to reach INR 1200
crores by the end of this fiscal year. Due to the high investments for upcoming launches in Q1 2020,
upGrad reported a nominal loss.

The company’s total revenue increased by 95%, from INR 85 crores in FY19 to INR 163 crores in
FY20. However, the healthy increase in revenue was offset by an 87% growth in the company’s
expenses, from INR 129 crores in FY19 to INR 241 crores, leading to an increase in the company’s net
loss for the year.

The Edtech startup is looking forward to raising around $400 million in their upcoming investment
round to join the unicorn club of companies. This would mean a five-fold jump in the total valuation
of the company, as per the latest fundraising round.

upGrad has been successful in achieving its target unicorn status on August 9, 2021, by raising
around $185 Mn in a round led by Temasek, IIFL, and IFC at a valuation of $1.2 Bn. Ronnie Screwvala,
Chairperson and Co-founder of upGrad has confirmed the news remarking, "Yes, the last value was
at USD 1.2 Billion, but as I keep saying, we are not a fan of the tag name unicorn - for us, it is only a
means to a much larger goal."

upGrad - Future Plans

In the next 5 years, upGrad aims to train and build the careers of over 1 million learners and expects
its impact to reach at least 5 million working professionals associated with it in a cascading effect.
This growing ecosystem in the long run will serve the momentum for establishing it as India’s largest
online higher education company with a strong focus on employability.

The company is all set to revolutionize the online learning experience and enhance the employability
quotient of its learners.
To build awareness about new offerings amongst working professionals and aspiring students,
upGrad used LinkedIn for strategic outreach.

With an aim to reach potential learners who would benefit from their multitude of offerings, upGrad
decided to leverage LinkedIn as their platform of choice. They were not just looking to build
awareness for brand upGrad, but also facilitate a hike in the number of people showing interest to
enrol in their various courses. upGrad’s marketing team thus zeroed in on an always-on content
marketing approach that helped them balance their brand and demand objectives.

Brand Introduction

Founded in 2015, upGrad is an online higher education platform providing courses in Data Science,
Technology, Management and Law. Each program is designed in collaboration with established
universities such as IIT Madras, MICA, and NMIMS Global Access. The brand aims at providing quality
education to help students build careers of tomorrow.

Objective

In line with the growing demand for online learning and their brand proposition of ‘Lifetime
Learning’, upGrad launched an array of new online programs, to attract a wider audience. With an
objective of building awareness around their new offerings amongst working professionals and
aspiring students, the brand zeroed in on LinkedIn for delivering strategic outreach.

Creative Idea

upGrad adopted a two-fold approach on LinkedIn with an ‘always-on’ content marketing strategy at
its core. The idea was to build brand upGrad in the industry but also deliver on their enrolment
objective.

Execution

upGrad aimed to reach ambitious professionals who often seek new opportunities and are looking to
upskill. According to statistics, LinkedIn members are 2x more intent-driven and 1.7x more receptive
to ads – an opportunity for upGrad to deliver better engagement with aspirational content. Further,
the professional networking platform offers an array of targeting options most effective to reach
non-traditional learners and nurture them along their decision-making journey.

As a part of their ‘always-on’ strategy, upGrad tailored content for every stage of the learner’s
decision-making journey. The approach aimed to achieve three broad objectives – Awareness,
Consideration, Conversion.

 For Awareness, upGrad created solution-oriented content around recurring professional

debates and topics discussed often.
 To build consideration, the brand gave users a chance to meet the mentors and draw
inspiration from success stories.
 As a part of their last-mile conversion strategy, upGrad consistently sponsored eye-catchy
posts with lead generation forms that delivered quality leads from a nurtured audience.

Over a period, the brand has created a healthy balance between their organic content and
sponsored posts to reach and nurture net-new prospective learners. They have consistently
monitored campaigns to nail their targeting approach, reaching specific job titles, roles, behaviours,
and interests for each of their courses.
Finally, the marketing team at upGrad has embraced a long-term test and learn approach and are
always optimizing their messaging and creatives.

Results

A combination of the right platform, a strategic approach and finding a responsive target audience
has helped upGrad unlock their marketing goals on LinkedIn.

56% increase in unique visitors to upGrad’s LinkedIn page

87% increase in organic following in just 60 days

2.3X lift in brand mentions on LinkedIn

20% decrease in cost-per-lead

2X improvement in the lead-to-enrolment numbers

 What is KVIC? – An epitome of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’

What is KVIC? Well, it refers to Khadi and Village Industries Commission, a statutory body set up in
1957 to empower and employ village and local bodies. After the recent “Aatmanirbhar” plea by our
hon. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, every company in the country has started showcasing their
Indian roots. Funny enough the companies that don’t really have roots are now racing towards
showing their logical roots in the country. What better time than this to be a proud Indian?

So, while it would have been easy to post a few advertisements of different companies on the page
pretending that we know what the concept of “Aatmanirbharta” is all about, we instead went step
ahead to give you an example of something the community out there isn’t talking about. But in
essence is an epitome of what “Atmanirbharta” is. Here we go.

What was Khadi to people before Marketing touched the industry: Khadi was a handspun fabric
(usually cotton) made on ambar charkha used by Gandhiji and village made fabric which is inferior in
quality as compared to other cloth materials.

Not too appealing?

Here’s what happened after Marketing touched the industry: Khadi became a traditionally woven
cloth, indicative of Indian history. It provides you with comfort and hints at a premium look. While
also ensuring you pride your Indian roots.

Good huh?

So, how did Khadi break this stereotype of “boring” and become the darling textile of India’s fashion
houses?

KVIC and the private companies! They’re the gamechangers! So, before we deep dive into the
“How”, let us understand the “What”

What is so different about Khadi?

For a start, khadi can actually refer to any natural fabric (cotton or silk) that has been hand-spun and
hand-woven. It is extremely eco-friendly fabric. Why? Well, it requires 3 litres of water as against 56
litres for mill fabric; it leaves zero carbon footprint since its handmade. Isn’t this exactly what
appeals to today’s world? Especially the fortunate lots: customized, exclusive premium material.

Humble beginnings:

With an objective of generating employment for the rural lots and making them self-reliant, KVIC
was set up by an Act of Parliament in 1957. Like we said, it’s an epitome of “Atmanirbharta”. The
setting up of KVIC gave a major morale boost to rural industries, which now, not only promoted
khadi but also produced a wide variety of other products. These products ranged from soaps,
shampoos, processed foods, leather, hand-made paper, ceramic, spices as well as handloom
products. Back then, while the customers willingly accepted eco-friendly products, they really were
unsure about the quality and durability of these products. And hence the expansion efforts were
slow.
Reaching the metros of India:

By the year 2000, the industry managed to expand to 7000 outlets called khadi bhandars. These
expansions meant no good, since these outlets did not have the expertise to tap into the right set of
customers for their products. Right Marketing efforts and a brand name was need of the hour.
Realizing this, in a hope to develop the quality, trust, and the right set of audiences for their
products, the committee decided to build two brands. With this Sarvodaya and khadi were born.

Now, to take care of the quality, SQC (Sarvodaya quality circle) was formed which was run by the
village authorities and overlooked by BIS (Bureau of Indian Standards) representatives in KVIC’s R&D
division. This improved trust among their customers. KVIC also tied up with IIT Delhi, to use their
students’ technical knowledge for improving rural industries. With this they also redesigned their
distribution network and reached out to the retail stores in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, etc. This was a
good idea because these metro cities more than anything had recently developed love for eco-
friendly and local products.

Good stuff, right?

But there was a problem. Even though, the fabric was comfortable to wear and had sweat absorbent
properties, it lacked new designs and hence wasn’t cut out to match the new trends. This made it
less appealing to people, and hence, did not really pick the steam back then.

Here’s what changed the game!

The entry of private companies:

The large-scale apparel manufacturers started collaborating with KVIC to use khadi in new
collections and product lines. You can say, these private companies realized the potential of this
premium material and launched their own product lines. Also, Khadi made a few features in some
really well-known fashion shows and Magazines like Forbes, etc. Here’s the notable ones:

‘Khadi by Peter England’ by Aditya Birla Group for its menswear brand in 2017

‘Khadi, the Store Re-Spun’ by Raymond

Arvind Ltd developed Khadi denim with KVIC authorization

Sabyasachi Mukherjee featuring Khadi lehengas, since 2002

Featured in Forbes Magazine as premium apparel

Fashion shows like Lakme fashion featuring khadi garments

The last but most important angle that helped the success of KVIC was government schemes. A
scheme called – Prime Minister Employment Generation Programme (PMEGP) was launched which
helped with finance, infrastructure and banking facilities to rural enterprises. This supported the
functioning of KVIC. They have also launched an online portal where they have listed all types of
industries registered or are functioning under them.
The result:

You’d be surprised to know, KVIC recorded higher revenues than HUL, a largest consumer goods
company in India! KVIC’s sales stood at Rs.75000 crore – which was twice that of HUL’s at 38000
crore in 2019. Didn’t know this, did you?

KVIC has employed more than 21 lakh people in last 5 years. KVIC had been the apex organization of
Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) and has proved to be the breeding ground for a lot
of budding start-ups. This is what essentially boasting the ‘Make in India’ movement is. A strong
example of Atmanirbhartha!