Rural distribution company StoreKing is eyeing a fund raise of $40-50 million dollars for its next phase of growth. The company is in the final stages of closing this transaction.
“The main issue faced in the rural market during the lockdown was with supply. Kirana stores have been growing at a steady rate of 10-12 percent per month,” says Sridhar Gundaiah, CEO, LocalCube Commerce, which runs StoreKing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital adoption among kirana stores in rural areas and StoreKing is looking to tap this opportunity.
“We have seen as many as 4,000+ fresh signups during the lockdown,” he adds, in a video interview with YourStory’s Daily Dispatch. Interestingly, many of these fresh signups have been the outcome of ‘reverse migration’.
StoreKing, which is associated with helping brands like HUL, Dabur, and Godrej sell products in rural India, is working with a current Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) run rate of Rs 700 crore a year. It is targeting a GMV of Rs 2,000 crore a year over the next 12 to 15 months.
The fund-raise activity will help StoreKing push the pedal on innovation and help kiranas expand their product inventory by selling products outside the spectrum of FMCG.
StoreKing recently also introduced the concept of ‘MyStore’, which showcases the entire inventory of kirana stores to customers so that they can choose from a vast array of available products.
The virtual inventory allows customers to explore a wide range of available products from the comfort of their home, using electronic devices such as mobile phones or laptops. This has helped in increasing the revenue of kiranas by 20 percent every month.
“In a way we are just trying to make kirana the biggest reseller as a concept so that 20,000 kiranas can move up to half a million kiranas in the coming days. That has been our target for 2021” Sridhar says.
