Mumbai-based retail tech startup NutriTap Technologies has raised $1.5 million in a pre-series A round of funding from Venture Catalysts, LetsVenture, IK Capital, Elysian Fintech, and other few marquee HNIs from the retail industry.
The capital raised will help then ramp up in-house technology, invest in R&D and grow presence across sectors and cities.
NutriTap, founded in 2018 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Rajesh Kumar and Priyank Tewari, creates alternate retail channels for brands to do Direct-to-Customer (D2C) Retail. The startup’s full-stack retail expertise includes smart kiosk technology and a simplified distribution mechanism.
Speaking on the fundraise, Rajesh Kumar, co-founder of NutriTap said, “In India, kiosk-based retail is now accepted as an alternate mode of retailing. To make sure that customers get the right retailing solution, you need to have the right technology to do that. At NutriTap, we are building the technology to address this alternate channel market which stands at $10 billion.”
“While traditionally, alternate, kiosk-based retail has been associated with vending machines and has been very limited to either corporate snacking or residential grocery categories, we believe that our technology has the potential to cater to the larger FMCG retail market and bring in a D2C flavor for brands across multiple categories,” Priyank Tewari, Co-founder of NutriTap added.
Speaking on the investment round, Apoorva Ranjan Sharma of Venture Catalysts said, “What NutriTap is building will propel them to become the category leaders in this still nascent space of unmanned, alternate retailing and we believe that they have the right team to make this happen.”
Further commenting on the funding round, Ishank Kumar, managing partner of IK Capital said, “NutriTap was able to not just survive back-to-back COVID waves, but also posted solid growth numbers on the back of timely pivots. We trust the capability of the founders in building a full-stack alternate retail company and executing the vision of making retail easier and accessible for customers and brands.”