Sachin Bansal adds more to his cart, invests ₹200 million in Milkbasket

• Milkbasket has raised ₹200 million in venture debt from Sachin Bansal’s firm BACQ.
• Earlier in March 2019, Milkbasket had announced the acquisition of Veggie India for an undisclosed amount.
• The grocery space has been heating up in India, with Bigbasket joining the unicorn club and unicorn startup Swiggy having entered the segment.

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal is back in the news. Bansal’s firm BACQ has invested venture debt worth ₹200 million into Milkbasket – a grocery delivery startup.

Bansal, through BACQ, had earlier made an investment in digital lending platform Krazybee and a personal investment in Ola technologies. Venture debt is a type of debt financing given to early stage companies.

"Milkbasket is now working on the next set of innovations to further consolidate its market leader position across it’s fresh (fruit & vegetables) offering, automating the daily delivery supply chain and reducing go to market time for multi-city expansion. These funds would provide us the needed CAPEX and R&D investments in all the three domains.” Anant Goel, co-founder and CEO, Milkbasket added.

In March 2019, Milkbasket had acquired one-year-old startup Veggie India for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, the founders of the Noida-based Veggie India Jainendra Upadhyay and Shailendra Upadhyay as well as all of their employees had joined Milkbasket.

The Gurugram-based startup Milkbasket had earlier raised about $16 million from Mayfield Advisors, Beenext, Kalaari Capital, Unilever Ventures, Lenovo and Blume Ventures at a reported valuation of $30 million.

According to CRISIL, the online retail market in India is expected to grow 250% to touch ₹1.8 trillion by 2020 fiscal.

The Indian grocery market has become a hot sector with bigwigs joining in the race. Milkbasket, which earlier focussed on delivery of milk and dairy products, had expanded its business to begin grocery delivery. Foodtech unicorn Swiggy too had announced its entry in the segment with Swiggy stores. One of the leaders in the space, Bigbasket had joined the unicorn club in March 2019 with a $2.3 billion valuation.

See Also:
Indian grocery startup Bigbasket enters the unicorn club with a reported $2.3 billion valuation
Four years into the business, Milkbasket has acquired one-year-old startup Veggie India