Quicklly, an online marketplace for South Asian/Indian grocery products and meal kits, is seeking to expand with the help of a new, $4 million investment, which it plans to use to expand its online and offline partnerships and boost its geographic footprint for same-day delivery.
The company currently offers a range of more than 250,000 products nationwide through its own website and Instacart, and same-day delivery in the greater Chicago, San Francisco Bay, and New York City/Northern New Jersey areas. In the coming months, it expects to expand same-day delivery to Austin, Texas; Seattle; Los Angeles and other cities throughout the United States.
Quicklly, based in Chicago, provides a platform for retailers and restaurants to sell South Asian and Indian products online. It offers a range of fresh and shelf-stable grocery items, organic grocery subscription boxes, and other specialty items. It also provides the ability to “shop by recipe,” allowing customers to buy all the ingredients they need for individual meals.
“We work on a zero inventory model,” said Keval Raj, who co-founded the company with Hanish Pahwa and launched the platform in 2017. “We don’t procure directly from the manufacturers. Instead, through partnerships with the retailers, we provide them with a digital marketplace to sell online.”
The latest seed funding round, which included investors JAM Fund, Great North Ventures, and Pat Vihtelic, the founder of Home Chef, follows the completion of a $1.27 million pre-seed funding round last March.
In February, Quicklly launched the Quicklly Indian Meal Kits storefront on Instacart, available without a subscription, and in June the company announced a partnership with Shef, a provider of home-cooked Indian meals.
In an interview with SFA News Daily, Raj estimated that about 80 percent of Quicklly’s customers are of Southeast Asian descent.
“With the recent Quicklly and Instacart partnership, our reach has gone beyond the Southeast Asian market with Quicklly Meal Kits and the grocery storefront on Instacart,” he said, adding that he expects the company’s reach to non-Southeast Asian customers to grow.
Indian groceries such as atta, rice, dal, and paneer, along with halal meats, are the top sellers in the local delivery markets, Raj said. In the national delivery market, Indian meal kits, sweets, and snacks are the top sellers.
Quicklly promotes its platforms primarily through digital marketing, as well as organic and word-of-mouth promotion, he said, citing a customer satisfaction rate of 98 percent.
Although Quicklly is currently focused on direct-to-consumer sales, the company is also researching whether it might someday focus on supplying retailers or restaurants through a B2B model, Raj said.
In announcing the latest investment, Quicklly also said it is expanding its team to more than 50 full time and contracted employees, from 28 currently. This includes the addition of Divya Dixit as the company's first vice president of growth marketing and Maiwand Mayar as head of offline growth.
Related: Quicklly Kicks Off Diwali With Subscription Box; Quicklly Launches Kimbala Chai, Coffee.