Wheelocity, a supply chain startup, has raised USD 12 million in a series A round of funding led by Lightspeed. The round was a mix of equity and venture debt. It also saw participation from Anicut Capital and other investors.
Read: June 2022 Issue of Food InfoTech Magazine.
Founded in September 2021 by Selvam VMS and Senthil Kumar, Wheelocity provides quick commerce firms with a supply chain of fresh food. The startup says its supply chain network integrates collection centers, fulfilment and distribution centers, last-mile hubs, dark stores and logistics.
Wheelocity will use the fresh capital to build new product offerings on farm side operations and developing technology to deliver automation and standardisation, as well as product development. It will also hire across product, technology, and operations.
It offers plug-and-play models for its business-to-business (B2B) clients, meaning any company that wants to offer fresh fruits and vegetables to its customer base can tie up with Wheelocity and immediately enable the service.
The Chennai and Bengaluru-headquartered startup competes with Ninjacart, which also offers a plug-and-play model for B2B customers. Since its inception, the startup has scaled up operations to more than 12 cities.
“We are going to enable all our customers to buy directly from farmers, thereby getting much better economics and much better visibility and consistency of quality and supply. So, the farm side network is something that we are investing a great deal into building out,” Selvam said.
The company said it can enable its customers to launch in new cities in less than a week through the help of its integrated network of collection centres, fulfilment and distribution centres, last-mile hubs, dark stores, and logistics services.
“We’re confident that their full-stack approach will enable multiple businesses to scale and grow, across multiple fresh categories and geographies,” said Rahul Taneja, partner, Lightspeed Venture Partners, in a statement.