Micro-delivery startup MrNeeds raises USD 500K in pre-Series A funding

Noida-based online micro-delivery startup MrNeeds raised close to USD 500K in pre-Series A funding from a consortium of investors, including Umesh Arora, an IT professional with interests in several ventures.

Founded in 2016 by Hitashi Garg, Ravi Verma, Ravi Wadhwa and Yogesh Garg, MrNeeds runs an app-based subscription service that delivers milk, bread, eggs and other groceries on a daily basis to its customers. The startup, a micro-delivery-based model, focuses exclusively on optimising the supply chain and reducing delivery costs. As a result, it has drastically cut down its per-delivery cost by restricting all deliveries to only customers living in high-rise complexes, and making all deliveries between 6am-9am.

The startup started operations in October 2016 and presently serves over 36,000 orders a month, with 9,000 families in Noida as its subscribers.

"Our growth demonstrates how customers appreciate the value proposition of our differentiated business model. Further, we have fine tuned our operations and our per delivery costs are 50 to 70 percent lower than the industry standard," said Ravi Wadhwa.

MrNeeds levies no delivery charge and does not specify a minimum order value for its customers. Moreover, as the focus is on delivering perishable items like milk and bread that needs to be consumed daily or several times a week, MrNeeds has a very high share of daily active users.

"This investment will power our expansion as we move towards realising our vision of serving millions of customers everyday and addressing all their daily needs via one platform," added Wadhwa.

The company intends to use this capital to expand its operations from select neighborhoods in Noida to other parts of Delhi-NCR region; including Dwarka, Indirapuram and Gurugram.

The serviceable market opportunity for daily essentials consumed by Indians living in high-rises across India is pegged at USD 10 billion, according to estimates.

-ANI