Ideas|Products|Startups|VCs

E-Commerce business focused on groceries are back in focus with few companies tying up funding recently. Although investors were wary about online stores, but that sentiment has changed. Bangalore witnessed the launch of Toptomato, founded by the alumnus of IIT KGP.

Toptomato.in is an online platform for ordering all household items in a simple and convenient manner. They have over 6000+ products in their portfolio spanning the FMCG segments of food, personal care and household care items. They also have highly customized delivery solutions to take care of the preferences of customers in the best possible way. Toptomato.in is the answer to mundane Sunday morning shopping chores, long queues at the billing desks and daily procurement hassles.

TopTomato has couple of unique features which sets it apart in the e-com marketplace.  The website offers packages for different segments of customers and specific delivery slots for comfortable shopping. One can also opt for Toptomato subscription which is based on weekly/bi-weekly/ monthly basis. The website currently retails kitchen and daily essentials and currently features deep discounts on several products. Currently they are operational in South, East and Central Bangalore.

Key USPs:

• Customised home delivery solutions – delivery within 24 hours
• Periodic Deliveries – you place your order once and they are automatically delivered to you
• Concept of shopping list and customized packages

 About the Founders:

Ms. Sneha Roy, Director – Sneha is an Instrumentation Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Post her graduation, Sneha joined ITC where she handled diverse profiles including Project Manager & Plant Maintenance Manager. Sneha believes in doing things differently and innovation is her passion.

Ms. Sananda Misra, Director – Sananda is an Instrumentation Engineer from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. After IIT, Sananda joined Procter and Gamble, Bhopal where she spearheaded multiple projects.

Direct Competitiors : Bigbasket, Zopnow.

Investments in this space:

ZopNow – (July 2012)- Raised Series A from Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and media group     Bennett Coleman & Co.

EkStop: (June 2012) – Undisclosed angel funding from angel investors. The investors include:

• Jayesh Parekh (co-founder of Sony Entertainment Television),
• Deepak Shahdadpuri (head of Beacon India Private Equity Fund),
• Patrick Turner (Runs the entrepreneurship department at INSEAD),
• Jungle Ventures, Sanjay Kamlani (co-CEO of Pangea3)
• Senior Google and McKinsey executives.

Bigbasket – (March 2012)-Bangalore-based private equity firm Ascent Capital invested $10 million in the first round of funding in BigBasket.com

Give TopTomato a spin and let us know your feedback.

-Abhishek, vcBytes.com

Snapdeal.com, the biggest deals & discount internet company in India has closed $40M as series B investment led by Bessemer Ventures and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures also participated in this round. As per Kunal Bahl, Founder & CEO of Snapdeal this investment seems to be the largest Venture capital infusion in an internet company in a single round.

Interestingly Snapdeal has raised $12M in the month of January fron Nexus Venture Partners and IndoUS Ventures, thus total investment raised by Snapdeal has touched $52M. Earlier it was reported by Economic Times that Snapdeal is in talks with Bessemer Ventures and existing investors to raise 200Cr at 1000Cr Valuation.

Snapdeal claims to be adding 1.5M new users every month, their merchant base has crossed 30,000 and their deals and discount are available in over 50 cities in India. Snapdeal plans to expand its team and would like to take it upto 800 within this year.

Lets take a look at their monthly traction:

Unique visitors (estimated cookies)	11M
Page views	34M
Total visits	18M
Avg time on site	3:20

Couple of months back Snapdeal introduced voucher of phone service. The new service allows users of snapdeal to avail deals bought from the website without having to carry a print out of the deal. The transaction is carried out through the SMS message that the customer gets on the registered mobile number after buying a deal. This initiative has given good results to the company catering to the 30% of its user base which access deals on their mobile.

In June 2010 Snapdeal has acquired Bangalore based deal startup Grabbon.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

BigshoeBazaar, an online wholesaler and retailer of shoes, apparels etc has closed its series B round of investment of $9M from Narayanmurthy floated Catamaran Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners. The deal was almost done after BigshoeBazaar raised its series A investment.

With this new investment Catamaran Ventures has picked up 13 per cent stake in the online firm for Rs 26 crore, Nexus Venture Partners has picked up 7 per cent stake for Rs 14 crore. The funds will be used to strengthen supply chain and setting up warehouses to support growth at the front-end,” Bigshoebazaar India Co-founder Manmohan Agarwal said.

BigshoeBazaar primarily runs a B2C portal Yebhi.com formerly known as Bigshoebazaar.com which sell footwear mainly and now it has added few more categories like Clothing, jewellery. Yebhi.com does around 4000 transactions on a daily basis. Bigshoebazaar runs a wholesale network across the country targeted at small retailers in Tier2 and Tier3 cities to source Global brands like Adidas, Nike etc. which in general don’t have access to such brands. Bigshoebazaar has also started franchisee business, where it offers shoe retailers to use it brand and retailers source the footwear from the company.

You may check out Nitin Agarwal’s interview here, Nitin is one of the Cofounder of BigShoeBazaar.

Lets look at the monthly traction at Yebhi.com:

Worldwide
Unique visitors	840K
Page views	9M
Total visits	1.2M
Avg time on site	8:50

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Exclusively.in, a private flash sale site has raised $16M from Tiger global, Accel partners India and Helion Venture Partners.  As of now the company has been targeting NRIs living in US and sells Indian attires such as saris, tunics, jewelry and very traditional wedding gowns etc.

Exclusively.in plans to utilize the fund in expanding their distribution network, doubling its workforce. Exclusively.in plans to become an international player in this space and will expand its flash sale site to 50 countries, 30 countries will be covered by this year end. Their deliveries will start to UK from the mid week of June. Exclusively.in will be catering to Indian audience from the 3rd Quarter of this year.

Like FashionandYou Exclusively.In sends out a daily email containing the several styles it has for sale. Members who subscribe to the email are able to purchase the items at a discount until the inventory is gone.

Lets have a look at their US and Worldwide traction –

Country Worldwide Unique visitors (estimated cookies) 120K 130K Unique visitors (users) 77K 92K Page views 2.1M 2.2M Total visits 260K 270K Avg visits per cookie 2.1 2 Avg time on site 8:40 8:00

Exclusively.in was founded in mid 2010 and have offices in NewYork and New Delhi currently. Exclusively.in has raised $2.8M in Nov 2010 from Helion Venture partners and Accel Partners.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

ThePrivateSales.com a flash sale site promoted by Bangalore based TPS shopping Outlet Pvt Ltd has raised $5M from a private company. ThePrivateSales was founded in mid 2010 by Sunder and Sajan Gianchandani as a flash sales website offering high-end products by Indian and global fashion labels.

Investments will primarily used in adding more brands in the inventory and also increase man power and open offices and warehouses across all the metros. Good part of Investment will go into brand building and marketing,ThePrivateSales plans to invest heavily on online and viral marketing, they would spend nearly 1Crore on it.

Unlike FashionandYou, Theprivatesales deals with high end designer labels like Versace, Renata Riggi etc. Since founders have vast experience in fashion industry they are leveraging their experience in striking fantastic deals. I personally like the categorization of products at ThePrivateSales.com, easy to find products, and like FashionandYou where all brands of a particular category are placed in one webpage. Discounts offered by ThePrivateSales are pretty good compared to other flash sale sites.

ThePrivateSales.com claims to have above 4L registered users, their monthly sales are growing at 50-60%. Major competitors in this space are – 99Labels.com, Bagittoday, Fashionandyou.com, Exclusively.in

Lets have a look at ThePrivateSales monthly traction -

ThePrivateSales.com has healthy traction, and with investments coming in its all poised to go upwards.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com