Anant Goel of Milkbasket enters the F&V space with Sorted and receives more than $5 million in the current seed round.
Co-founder and ex-CEO of Milkbasket, Anant Goel today announced the launch of Sorted, an omnichannel platform for fruits and vegetables (F&V), powered by proprietary technology and a franchisee network of digitised mom-and-pop stores. Co-founded by Nitin Gupta and Sahil Madan, the tech-driven F&V platform has raised in excess of $5 million in its ongoing seed round.
In an interaction with ETRetail, Anant Goel, founder and CEO, Sorted declined to share the valuation at which the brand has raised funds stating, “Working closely with mom-and-pop stores, Sorted is eyeing to capture a significant pie of this $160 billion, high-frequency and high-margin category.”
The brand will be deploying the funds to create proprietary technology, hire talent, and set up regional and national supply chains for fruits and vegetables.
The brand will source fruits and vegetables directly from the farmers, and will offer them to the customers at a competitive price through the medium of their choice – call, message, online or offline, powered by a high-density network of Sorted franchisees – the existing mom-and-pop stores.
“Sorted is not attempting to change the way India buys F&V, it’s plugging the inefficiencies that plague the existing supply chains. We have undertaken multiple POCs over the last 9 months to solve the known industry issues, especially wastage while answering for growth and profitability,” he said.
“By getting access to Sorted’s proprietary technology, procurement services, hyperlocal demand generation tools, and data science capabilities, stocking and selling fruits and vegetables shall become easier and simpler for mom-and-pop stores than procuring and selling the FMCG products,” asserted Goel.
Highlighting the difference between Sorted and other players in the industry, Goel said, “The existing business models are created and optimised for selling FMCG – man-made, pre-packed products with a known shelf life, selling in fixed quantities through a static catalogue – none of which is true for fruits and vegetables. It just has to be solved differently and distinctly. If and when done, this can be the fastest, profitable decacorn in the making. And that’s what we are aspiring for!”
The brand was launched in Gurugram as a pilot project. Goel declined to share the number of mom-and-pop stores the brand has tied up with stating, “we are constantly acquiring mom-and-pop stores in the vicinity, so it is a very dynamic number.”
