Back Portfolio / Direct (ShopKirana)

SSIO – III

India’s distribution landscape is dominated by 11M kirana stores covering 95% of the $600B grocery market, largely unorganized & fragmented. Only 20% of the kiranas are serviced directly by brands – rest 80% is a visibility blackhole for FMCG brands. New-age players like Direct are disrupting the way FMCG brands will access retail, with an industry-first go-to-market DIY platform giving 100% visibility to consumer preferences – while empowering kirana stores with technology, making them future ready!

Direct reaches over 50K kiranas across 8 cities covering MP, UP, Rajasthan & Gujarat, with plans to be in 30 cities & over 1 lac kirana stores in next 12 months. With 250 brands onboarded, Direct has a deep partnership with FMCG companies like Unilever, ITC Limited, Dabur India Limited, Reckitt, Procter & Gamble, emerging to be the #1 distributor in dominant categories with 10% market share. Leveraging the D2C opportunity, as brands look to scale beyond online, Direct aims to provide D2C brands a ready to use GTM product – instant reach, warehousing / logistics infrastructure, and kirana-focused marketing tools.

We are building India’s biggest go-to-market platform for FMCG brands. With the right product market fit and considering the heavy adoption from kirana stores, legacy FMCG brands & D2C brands, we are super excited to partner Sixth Sense as we take the business to national scale. We became focused on tier-2 & for the first three years, we kept our head down & made sure we have strong product-market fit & unit economics. We are the first company to hit operational break-even in the segment.

Sumit Ghorawat, Deepak Dhanotiya and Tanutejas Saraswat

In the News

Shopkirana raises $38 million led by Info Edge, Oman India, Sixth Sense Ventures