Otipy-a Delhi NCR based startup that allows users to order fruits and vegetables directly from farms, has raised $1 million from Inflections Point Ventures after witnessing a staggering growth in business.
During the last 3 months of the coronavirus enforced lockdown, the company saw a 4x growth in its operation, expanding into new regions like Noida, Ghaziabad and Greater Noida. This enticed the startup to raise fast capital to meet the growing demand, and to sustain the momentum it has acquired in the last few months. The company will use these funds to augment the existing technology infrastructure, further expand the reseller base in Delhi/NCR, and go deeper with its farmer relationships so that consumers can get the freshest produce at the lowest prices.
Otipy is an emerging Indian startup, and the social commerce venture of farm-to-fork agritech startup Crofarm. The platform aims to connect farmers directly to their customers through online channels and vice versa. The goal of the platform is to provide fresh produce directly from the farm, using something called demand harvesting. By using AI-based demand prediction tools, the platform collects historical data to predict the demand of products. This is then used to procure just the right amount of produce, facilitating on-demand harvesting, and thereby ensuring delivery of fresh produce on the same day. Moreover, this also precludes wastage of food items.
However, perhaps the most pertinent part of Otipy’s business model is the involvement of women resellers to imbue the idea of entrepreneurship in the average Indian woman. At its roots, Otipy is a B2B2C platform, providing women the opportunity to use its platform to start a business of their own. Using Otipy, women can order fresh fruits and vegetables directly from farms, making use of its Quick delivery channels (you can place an order at 9pm and get it delivered by the next morning) to further sell them in their communities. Moreover, due to the direct to consumer nature of the platform, Otipy provides fruits and vegetables at a heavy discount (as much as 25%), which leaves a lot of room for some money to be made. The company already has more than 1000 partner resellers (mainly women), catering to over 1,00,000 consumers.
Varun Khurana, Co founder and CEO of Otipy said, “We have built a very strong community with our partner resellers (mostly women) and have empowered them by providing an alternate source of income especially in these times when other sources have dried up. Also, with the recent changes in APMC our farmer network is growing at a very fast pace.”
“The company has really performed well since its inception, and it’s certainly going to be a trendsetter in the times to come. We watched the company’s performance closely during lockdown, and more importantly its growth during the un-locking phase, which led to believe in its sustainable value proposition and the vision of transforming the entire farm ecosystem in India,” said Vinay Bansal, founder of IPV.
