Tony Xu, the founder of Doordash, a US-based online food ordering and food delivery platform, has also invested in the round.
The firm will use the funds to invest in technology and scale its business in the category that is claimed to be a $65-billion market.
“While the last decade has been about the proliferation of new-age economies, (the) internet was still seen as a rival to offline retail. The retailer community has been at the receiving end for a while,” said Arzooo’s cofounder and CEO Khushnud Khan. “Today, technology is making inroads into brick-and-mortar shops and we are excited to be at the forefront of this revolution.”
Khan believes his firm is eliminating the barrier of size, scale and capital for medium and small stores while democratising retail in India.
Several tech companies are trying to bring internet-based technology to local mom-and-pop stores, including in the electronics category. Reliance’s Jiomart Digital and Udaan are some of the prominent players in the space.
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“Arzooo’s business model is very capital-efficient and can meet the increasingly diversified requirement of retail shops and end customers,” said Yoshitaka Kitao, chairman and president, SBI Holdings. “It is also great for them to have built a self-branded functional logistics system that is crucial to their business. There is no limit to the company’s future, and we would like to fully support them.”
Founded in 2018 by former Flipkart employees Khushnud Khan and
Raj Rathore, the startup has onboarded 30,000 physical retail stores across 22 states and offers them access to a wide range of inventory, helping them better compete with online platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.
