Alternate retail tech start-up NutriTap raises ₹10 cr in pre-series A round  

Gurgaon-based retail tech start-up NutriTap Technologies has raised ₹10 crores in a pre-series A funding round that saw participation from well-known investors including Venture Catalysts, LetsVenture, IK Capital and Elysian Fintech along with a few high-net-worth individuals from the retail industry.  

Founded in 2018 by IIT Kharagpur alumni Rajesh Kumar and Priyank Tewari, NutriTap creates alternate retail channels - through smart retail kiosks - for brands to do Direct-to-Customer (D2C) retail. Currently, NutriTap is operating more than 250 smart retail kiosks that are located across various metro cities.  

“In India, kiosk-based retail has started to be accepted as an alternate mode of retailing. To make sure that customers get the right retailing solution, you need to have the right technology to do that,” said Kumar.  

“At NutriTap, we are building the technology to address this alternate channel market, which stands at $10 billion… (we) are the only company in India to build a diverse range of solutions to address this demand across different sectors like corporate, hospitals, factories, residential apartments, hostels, co-working spaces and others” he added.  

The funds raised in the round will be used to ramp up the venture’s in-house technology, invest in R&D and grow its presence across sectors and cities.  

“While traditionally, alternate, kiosk-based retail has been associated with vending machines and has been very limited to either corporate snacking or residential grocery categories, we believe that our technology has the potential to cater to the larger FMCG retail market and bring in a D2C flavour for brands across multiple categories,” said co-founder Tewari.  

The start-up aims to enable smart retail across 800 locations in the next one year and in more than 2,500 locations across top metro cities of India in the next two years.