Milkbasket raises 3 million USD from Unilever Ventures and others in Pre-Series A

Milkbasket, a micro-delivery platform for groceries run by Gurgaon-based Aaidea Solutions Pvt. Ltd, today said it has managed to secure USD 3 million funding from Unilever Ventures, the investment arm of Unilever.

The Gurgaon-based startup, Milkbasket, was founded by Anant Goel, Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain, and Yatish Talvadia in 2015. Encashing the unique Indian habit, it started off by delivering fresh milk to homes every morning before 7 AM and has today grown to become a popular grocery delivery platform in Gurgaon.

"At present, Milkbasket is growing exponentially. Our vision is to become a strong player in online top-up groceries platform in India within the next five years," Milkbasket CEO Anant Goel said in a statement. Milkbasket’s current investors include BLUME Ventures, Lenovo Capital (LCIH), Empower Investment, Hofan Capital, Draphant, and angel investors including Peter Zou (CEO, YeahMobi), Vinay Bansal (ex-CFO, Wildcraft), Vikas Chauhan of 1MG, Deepak Jain of Bain & Co and select Milkbasket customers.

Olivier Garel, Head of Unilever Ventures, said Unilever Ventures aims to support some of the most disruptive emerging commerce models. Unilever Ventures' existing investments include Clavis Insight, Percolate, Blis, Gousto, Instacart, Blow, Nutrafol, Sun Basket, Iluminage Beauty, Froosh, and Voltea.

"Milkbasket's approach, leveraging Indian consumer’s habits and preferences, bringing convenience and attractive unit economics is definitely one of them," he added.

Unilever Ventures key focus areas include content creation, artificial intelligence, data analytics, e-commerce, internet of things, mobile marketing and video, in both developed and emerging markets.

Unilever's expertise and investment will be used to strengthen technology at the frontend as well as the backend, widening their assortment and customer base and will help them in monetising other streams of revenues as well.