A supply chain network for the fresh economy called Wheelocity has secured $12 million in a Series A round that was primarily spearheaded by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The $2 million in debt included in the investment round.
Wheelocity, which was established in September 2021 by Selvam VMS and Senthil Kumar, provides fresh produce to startups like Swiggy Instamart, Dunzo, Blinkit, and Zepto.
Anicut Capital joined the group of investors who took part in the round.
For its business-to-business (B2B) clients, it provides plug-and-play models, allowing any organisation that wants to provide fresh produce to its clientele to partner with Wheelocity and launch the service right away.
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.
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.
“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.