Good Morning,
ElasticRun recently secured $330 million in its Series E round, led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and joined India’s expanding unicorn club.
Founded by former DHL employees Sandeep Deshmukh, Saurabh Nigam, and Shitiz Bansal, the Pune-based business-to-business (B2B) startup was born in 2016.
The startup connects thousands of kiranas across the country with top brands. Its turning point, the founders say, arrived two years ago.
During April-May 2020, brands were looking at the rural market as the next frontier for growth, where companies needed scalable technology. ElasticRun already had the technology platform to aggregate brands and the crowdsourced-logistic and store network in place.
“It really changed our fortunes,” Sandeep tells YS, “We went on to record an exponential growth rate.”
“The business we would have done in a full year just happened in a month, and then every month, we were adding more than a year’s revenue,” he adds. Read more.
Editor’s Pick: Diginoor
Shaamil Karim and Yash Rathod launched Diginoor – a Delaware-headquartered NFT marketplace – straight after graduating high school. The young founders secured $1 million in seed funding and began building their NFT startup.
Although the founders do not reveal their overall sales, Shaamil claims their first Rajinikanth drop (which sold out) contributed to a 60 percent increase in sales for Diginoor. Read more
Startup Spotlight
Feeding farm cattle sustainably
Many animal-feed brands in India often manufacture adulterated animal feed to generate maximum profits.
This led Nikhil Bohra and his father Krishankant Bohra to start Krimanshi which manufactures nutritious climate-resilient animal feeds derived from upcycling of organic food waste and agri residues. Read more.
News & Updates
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