Sorted, an omni-channel platform for fruits and vegetables, has kickstarted its B2B business. It has begun offering a bouquet of services to small retailers, which include sourcing and demand generation, in the fruits and vegetables space.
The platform is founded by Milkbasket founder and former CEO Anant Goel, along with Nitin Gupta and Sahil Madan. It has so far raised over $5 million in an ongoing seed round.
“We are launching Saarthi, which is a bouquet of services in the fruits and vegetable segment. We are working directly with farmers and so we are offering mom-and-pop retailers the convenience to source fruits and vegetables through the Sarthi app. These retailers can place orders for an assortment of fruits and vegetables of the desired grade and quality. They will get these at competitive Mandi rates before 7 am every day,” Anant Goel, Founder and CEO of Sorted told businessline.
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The platform also offers services for price benchmarking for price optimisation. “We also offer our partner shops with tech tools such as Point-of-Sale (POS) systems, advanced forecasting capabilities, and data analytics. This enables these small retailers to optimise inventory management, reduce wastage, and boost operational efficiency,” he added.
The Saarthi service also offers demand generation service, enabling retailers to also offer a wider assortment to consumers on demand. “So far, we have piloted the Saarthi with over 25 mom-n-pop shops across multiple demographics. We have seen them being able to increase their F&V sales and incomes. Now we are targeting to onboard 300-350 retailers by the end of the year. For now, the service has been launched in Gurugram,” said Goel.
Asked about future fund raising, Goel said: “There are conversations going on to extend the seed fund round . We are seeing interest from investors including a couple of family offices.”
Stating that Sorted will follow a B2B2C model, Goel explained that in the first phase, the B2B business with Saarthi has been launched. “In the second phase, we will scale up the operations to launch the B2C business. This is likely to happen by the end of the year,” he added.