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.
Wheelocity, a supply chain network for fresh commerce, has raised $12 million (about Rs 95 crore) in its Series A round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The funding round had a debt component of $2 million. Anicut Capital also participated in the round along with other investors.
Founded in September 2021 by Selvam VMS and Senthil Kumar, Wheelocity supplies fresh fruits and vegetables to quick commerce companies like Swiggy Instamart, Dunzo, Blinkit, and Zepto. 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 compete 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 develop 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.
