Fresh produce food-tech venture, Pluckk, a brand owned by Fruveggiie Tech, has raised US$ 5 million seed capital in a funding round, from Exponentia Ventures, a fund focussed on emerging business ideas in both B2C and B2B space.
Founded in 2021, by Pratik Gupta, Pluckk aims to build India’s first digital commerce business to serve the growing demand of lifestyle-oriented fresh produce. The company’s proposition is centred on global food trends ranging from vegan, carb alternatives, gut health, immunity to plant-forward eating to prevent diabetes and mental health.
According to Pluckk, this round of funding will be utilised towards building the right team, technology, farm to fork infrastructure, customer acquisition and expansion into key metro cities. A part of this fund will also be utilised to acquire Indus Fresh – an existing player in the fresh FnV category serving both B2C and B2B customers.
Highlighting the development, Pratik Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, Pluckk said, “The biggest consumer revolution we are witnessing today is that consumers not only want to enjoy eating but are also increasingly very careful on what they eat. Pluckk aims to be the brand of choice by providing the widest curated range of such lifestyle-oriented fresh produce. At the core, Pluckk will work with farmers through its bespoke win-win programme that focuses on-farm practices to ensure residue-free and traceable produce.”
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With this fresh funding, the products and services of Pluckk will now also be made available to a wider set of consumers in key metro cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai, further expansion plans to Gurugram, Pune and Hyderabad, on its direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform as well as through leading e-commerce platforms under its brand name.
On the firm’s third investment, Alok Gupta, Partner, Exponentia Ventures, said, “Our commitment continues to invest in ideas that connect with the emerging ecosystem. In Pluckk, we find an agile business team with execution focus and leveraging a deep customer insight which can scale to millions of customers.”
The Indian online grocery market size is currently valued at US$ 4 billion growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37 per cent and is expected to grow 10X touching US$40 billion in the next seven years. Of the total grocery market, fruits and vegetables account for 15-20 per cent of the market size. Pluckk aims to gain a higher single-digit share of this market in the next 3-5 years.
Pluckk is a B2C fresh produce food-tech supply chain platform founded in July 2021. Co-founded by Pratik Gupta and seed-funded by Exponentia Ventures (EV) with current operation in Bangalore and Mumbai, it is a digital lifestyle-oriented fresh food brand in the fruits and vegetables (F&V) segment. Pluckk provides a platform to facilitate the ‘farm-to-table’ concept. The platform has onboarded 100 plus farmers across Mumbai and Bengaluru regions and plans to onboard 1,000 farmers by March 2022.
Exponentia Ventures catalyses ideas into reality, with passion, experience and insights and provide promising startups with the impetus to achieve their true potential. It nurtures its partners to optimise resources and leverage in-house expertise for a larger business impact through networking with the right target group. It helps its investee companies with a robust governance structure to create a win-win situation for all stakeholders. Timely and strategic interventions ensure swift and collaborative decision-making, providing real-time intelligence to excel.
