With the emergence of new startups and the presence of several existing players in the industry, the need of customer’s home delivery service is growing at a fast pace. Today, there is a increase in the number of e-commerce platforms that provides almost everything and deliver it to the doorstep.
No doubt, most of the daily needs and requirements are fulfilled by the old and new players, but for some of the daily needs and demands such as fresh milk, groceries, people often find a crunch, regardless of whether it is for a specific product. This is the reason behind many startups just concentrate in order to meet the daily needs and requirements. Among them, one such startup is ‘Milkbasket’, that aims to take care of the fresh supply of milk and more.
ALL ABOUT MILKBASKET-
The startup, Milkbasket is a subscription based micro-delivery service that offers its customers with regular dairy requirements and daily household needs. Founded by AnantGoel, Anurag Jain, Ashish Goel, and Yatish Talavdia in the year 2015, Milkbasket is a Gurugram-based company which is presently owned and operated by Reliance Industries and aims to build an e-commerce grocery to fulfill customer’s daily household need and dairy necessities.
The company offer a simple and easy delivery system that delivers milk, bread, eggs, butter, juices and other daily household need and basic dairy necessities to the doorstep every morning. The e-commerce platform also enables customers to keep a track of their daily expenditures, scheduled vacation time off, and even easily build repeat orders every day.
Back to the time when Ashish Goel was in the UK, he used to avail the service of ‘Milk and More’ to deliver groceries and other daily necessities, that made Anant realized that India even need such kind of service. Thus, entering the e-commerce industry at the time when the market was dominated by e-commerce platforms such as Grofers, BigBasket, LocalBaniya and many more. Milkbasket only focused to come in the market as an alternative to the mom-and-pop stores of every Indian neighbourhood.
The founders of the company started in the year 2015 with their first stall set up in an apartment complex in Gurugram, which bought them their first paying customer who installed the app. Initially, the team at Milkbasket used to deliver milky by themselves in their on personal car. But with the incresing demand, they had to hire a autorickshaw to deliver the products. Further, the volumn of order scaled up, that made Milkbasket collaborate with corporateand automotive companies and finally they established their own delivery fleet.
“Milkbasket has a near-perfect record of reaching growth targets since being founded in 2015. The rapid adoption of at-home grocery delivery amongst consumers due to the pandemic has provided us with an impetus to target IPO in just a year, which we had initially planned for the year 2023,” Anant Goel (Milkbasket co-founder and CEO) said.
GROWTH OF MILKBASKET-
In April 2015, the company began their startup with just 22 customers, and by the end of June in the same year, the company witnessed a rapid growth of more than 30,000 customers and too only in Gurugram itself. Milkbasket noticed a 3.8X increase in revenue in the year 2020, that ended in March last year with a mere increase in losses.
In the year 2020, the company noticed a revenue of INR 322 crore, of which 99.9% (INR 321.7 crore) came from operations. In the year 2020, the e-commerce platform’s expenses scaled up at the same pace to INR 337.7 crore, bringing its losses to INR 15.7 crore. In the year 2019, the company reported a revenue of INR 84.6 crore and expenses of INR 94.1 crore, making a loss of INR 9.5 crore.
The company has been in high demand since the lockdown began, as demand for e-commerce grocery delivery has scaled up dramatically. During the lockdown, many companies with a logistics and distribution backbone, such as Swiggy and Zomato, shifted to grocery delivery as these were the only essentials in demand across India. Milkbasket also launched its MbBulk and senior citizens only helplines in several cities across India in order to help people stay safe during lockdown without stepping out of their homes for groceries and dairy products.
Within the initial six months of its launch, the company efficiently and successfully shipped over 30 million orders and achieved a positive response. The pandemic has created a huge growth and demand opportunity for the e-commerce grocery delivery industry, which estimated that India’s online grocery market could reach $3 billion in 2020, up from $1.7 billion in 2019. The e-commerce grocery delivery industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 37.1% from 2021 to 2028. The industry was valued at USD 2.9 billion in 2020. It has gained tremendous traction since 2020.
BUSINESS MODEL OF MILKBASKET-
Milkbasket is a hyperlocal e-commerce platform that entire believes on an innovation-based model that sources the products directly from the brands. Milkbasket co-founder Anant Goel believes that the company has created and developed a contactless e-commerce grocery delivery model. Customers can place their orders before midnight and have them shipped and get the delivery by 7 a.m., according to Milkbasket.
The e-commerce grocery delivery startup doesn’t need checkout or payment as the purchase is prepaid with the help of a mobile wallet that is on the app. Thus, the users can simply top it up whenever they run out of funds. Milkbasket earns from its delivery charges, subscriptions, and commissions from each transaction.
MILKBASKET FUNDING AND INVESTORS-
Milkbasket witnessed a total amount of $78.5 million funds in over 11 funding rounds. The company’s investors’ include InnoVen Capital, Inflection Point Ventures, Mayfield Capital, Kalaari Capital, Blume Ventures and many more.
“Milkbasket has a near-perfect record of reaching growth targets since being founded in 2015. The rapid adoption of at-home grocery delivery amongst consumers due to the pandemic has provided us with an impetus to target IPO in just a year, which we had initially planned for the year 2023,” Anant Goel said.
By Gitika Mandhana
