SoftBank fund leads $60m round in Grofers

BENGALURU: Online grocer

Grofers

has raised about $60 million, led by Japanese internet and telecom giant SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The latest investment of

SoftBank

in Grofers is routed via the $100 billion vision fund.
TOI sourced these documents from business intelligence platform Paper.vc.


After raising this capital, Grofers is said to be valued at $425 million, according to initial estimates of Paper.vc. This comes at a time when online grocery is seeing heightened action from vertical as well as horizontal players. Companies like Amazon and Flipkart are continuing to invest in their grocery business, while grocery-focused players like

BigBasket

are also in the middle of advanced discussions to raise new capital.

Further, companies like

Swiggy

and

Dunzo

are scaling up their exposure to the grocery-delivery business. Venture capital firm

Sequoia

and

Tiger Global

, existing investors of the company, have also put capital in the firm in this round. A SoftBank spokesperson did not comment immediately on the infusion by Vision Fund. Grofers co-founder Albinder Dhindsa also declined to comment.

For the year ending March 2018, it reported losses of Rs 258 crore, while its net sales stood at almost Rs 30 crore. Over the past eight to 10 months, the company has been heavily expanding its bouquet of private labels that it sells on Grofers. Private labels offer higher margins and greater control over having adequate stock of products.