SuperK Raises $6M in Series A Funding Led by Blume Ventures

 Branded franchised retail chain for small towns of India, SuperK has raised $6 million in a Series A round of funding led by Blume Ventures with participation from Silver Needle Ventures, Veltis Capital, Atrium Angels, and some angel investors and syndicates. The funding will be used for investing in technology infrastructure, hiring, and scaling the platform to connect digital native brands with SuperK customers.

SuperK is a franchised retail chain for small towns of India, currently operating in over 80 Tier 3, 4, 5 towns of Andhra Pradesh serving 5 lakh+ families over the last four years. With SuperK, customers are moving from unorganised Kirana stores to a branded, organised retail experience where a majority of customers go through a self-service store for the first time. SuperK is creating a modern grocery experience for small-town customers at transparent and affordable prices. These customers are slowly transitioning from loose and unhygienic staples to packed and standardised staples from SuperK.

SuperK stores are typically between 500-1000 sq ft sized walk-in stores stocking around 2500 SKUs. Tech is a huge differentiator making SuperK the only offline retailer in the country that has a full track of customer behavior by collecting granular data at every purchase. This data allows for personalised offers for every customer. Tech is also used to motivate and gamify the store partners to drive specific selling behavior.

SuperK was founded in 2020 by Anil Thontepu and Neeraj Menta, two BITS Pilani batchmates, both second-time entrepreneurs. Anil has been with Kaodim (UrbanClap of South East Asia) before which he managed growth and product at Hike, Byjus, and Phonepe. Neeraj co-founded Hungerbox (India’s largest cafeteria management service) and has been with Flipkart and Zeta (Directi). 

 Neeraj Menta, Co-founder of  SuperK, said, “At SuperK, our vision is to bring a better grocery shopping experience for the small-town customers who are currently stuck with a subpar experience provided by their neighbourhood kirana store. Our customers have upgraded their lives since a SuperK store came up in their neighbourhood, their grocery shopping has moved from a chore to a family shopping experience. These customers have discovered new products and upgraded to a more healthy choice of staples at SuperK.”

Karthik Reddy, Blume Ventures, added, “We were tracking this space for a couple of years and while the market was hot for Tier 3-4 towns, retail enabled by a tech supply-chain backbone, we saw SuperK’s dense approach in AP paying off dividends and delivering store level profitability - we think it’s the right way to build modern trade for Bharat. We are excited to back the next phase of scale before we eventually tackle most of South India.”

 A SuperK store is set up for every 25k population, a ratio that allows the creation of a high density of stores in every district. SuperK is operationally profitable in the oldest region with just one town of Kadapa having more than 22 stores and holding more than 12% market share in a town of 4.5 lakhs in population. 

  Grocery retail is a $600 billion market in India. Small towns (Tier-II and below) account for more than 80% of the grocery market but only less than 5 percent is currently with organised retail chains.