This college dropout's start-up aims to change the traditional kirana model

For 20-years-old college dropout Pravas Chandragiri, understanding the Kirana or the FMCG business came naturally. 

Hailing from a Tier 3 town of Balasore in Odisha, his family was engaged in managing Kirana stores and Chandragiri, who dropped out from college in the first month of admission at KIIT, Bhubaneswar, was part of the business from a young age of 12. 

“That’s where I learnt about the pain points of Kirana stores and understood the inefficiencies of the FMCG supply chain. I started on the entrepreneurial journey from a young age of 17 years and used all my learnings and network to start up Soptle,” says Chandragiri. 

Simply put, Soptle is a Saas-based B2B FMCG commerce platform - a manufacturer-centric platform that offers countrywide serviceability. 

“Our SaaS platform and mobile application enables manufacturers to serve their existing supply chain better by providing access to procurement, production, demand generation, distribution, cash collection and reconciliation all in one single app. By digitising and incentivising the FMCG manufacturer, Soptle has created a one stop hub for the FMCG community,” explains Chandragiri. 

Gurugram-based start-up Soptle started operations in January 2022 and currently has a staff strength of nearly 30. It has also raised funds from well-known early-stage venture firms and angel investors. 

More importantly, Chandragiri, who is the sole founder of the start-up, has already built a strong network of more than 15,000 retail stores and over 100 regional manufacturers. 

This helped us to start in a bootstrapped manner and become a revenue generating business even before we raised our first round of capital, he says. 

Incidentally, the start-up makes money in each of the services that it provides to manufacturers, including procurement of raw material, production at factories, demand generation from distributors and wholesalers listed on Soptle’s App, end-to-end logistics support and also the fintech support. 

The potential, as per the start-up, is huge as the venture enables the manufacturers to serve different geographical locations – 28 states + seven UTs -- by providing access to country wide distribution. It also provides an opportunity to boost manufacturers’ income by sharing their existing supply chain with thousands of enterprising brands across the country. 

Interestingly, it has been registering a 3X month-on-month growth over the last quarters but is eyeing a growth of 10X. 

“We have a strong presence in 100+ cities of North & East India and after the next round of fund raise, we are planning to scale our operations country wide. By the end of 2023, we plan to go global and scale our product offerings to 10+ countries,” says Chandragiri. 

Chandragiri says his vision is to make FMCG distribution equitable and financially rewarding for the FMCG manufacturers. 

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