Ninjacart: The start-up, which made agritech look cool, is now looking to have a legacy of its own

The end of TaxiForSure in 2015 marked the birth of Ninjacart. The taxi aggregator, which Ola acquired in 2015, was the meeting ground for three of Ninjacart’s four main co-founders—Kartheeswaran K.K. (32), Vasudevan C. (39), and Thiru Nagarajan (38). “I was a Shout user and thought it was a nice app. A few weeks after Thiru joined TaxiForSure, I told him, ‘Machan! Do you know about this app called Shout? It’s a crazy thing, right?’ And he replied, ‘Dei, I’m the founder!’,” laughs CEO Kartheeswaran. Nagarajan had co-founded the hyperlocal social networking app with his former Commonfloor.com colleague Sharath Loganathan (40), who went on to become the fourth co-founder of Ninjacart. “TaxiForSure was a crash course in entrepreneurship where I saw how scale and commerce functioned,” says Vasudevan.

Each of them—all engineers from Tamil Nadu—nursed start-up ambitions, but their ideas were different. They met at TaxiForSure, realised they made a great team with complementary skill sets, and ultimately decided to launch an agritech start-up. As Ola was looking to acquire TaxiForSure, the three knew it was time to move on. It was TaxiForSure Co-founder and CEO G. Raghu’s encouragement that made them take the plunge into entrepreneurship.

Eight years on, the Bengaluru-headquartered B2B delivery app for retailers, restaurants and small business owners to order farm-sourced vegetables and fruits, staples, and groceries generated Rs 1,212.50 crore in revenue in FY23. It has a network of more than 800,000 farmers and 100,000 retailers across business lines, which has expanded to include Ninja Mandi, Ninja Kirana, Ninja Kisaan and Ninja Global that are apps tailored for agri commodity traders, small business owners, agri businesses, and importers and exporters, respectively. Each offers varying services such as credit solutions, business management tools, expert advisory, quality compliance solutions.

The team says 50 per cent of their businesses are profitable. And, they anticipate that 80 per cent of them will be making a profit and generating cash by the end of 2024. Ninjacart, which has set its sights on becoming profitable by FY26, saw its loss inch up to Rs 325 crore in FY23 from Rs 306 crore a year ago.

The Indian agriculture market is unique. Unlike the US, Europe or China, both the farmers and retailers here are much smaller in scale and hugely fragmented. That meant Ninjacart had to truly innovate for India, without a playbook to follow. Flipkart had Amazon to refer to, Ola had Uber, but Ninjacart had to learn by doing it all themselves, says the team. “I have tried 13 different experiments for four months each and closed them in our Ninjacart journey so far. Through these experiments, we are learning,” says Loganathan, who heads the product vertical. The mindset came in handy and helped a B2C business pivot to B2B. Until then, Ninjacart was delivering produce from retailers to end consumers. But when a retailer pointed out the challenges of fluctuating quality and price when acquiring fresh produce, the team spotted an opportunity to add value to both retailers and farmers. “Sharath (Loganathan) ran it as an experiment within the business, and that led to the start of what is today Ninjacart, a B2B business,” adds Kartheeswaran.

Now, the business operates in 70 cities and has more than 1,300 employees. Vasudevan, who looks after the people function, says hiring and retaining top talent has been their biggest challenge. They hired friends and friends of friends and eager college graduates in the first three years. But as the organisation started growing fast, it was time to bring in more complementary and senior management skills. “Our concern was what the old-timers would think. Would they feel we were not betting on them anymore? That is bad signalling,” says Kartheeswaran.

But the move was well received as everybody in the team had more people to learn from. The launch of Ninja Mandi, Ninja Kirana, Ninja Kisaan and Ninja Global around 2020 was a game changer in talent attraction. “Until then, it was operations-heavy. Now, it was more innovation-led. A good chunk of our team joined in the past 1.5-2 years,” says Vasudevan.

The ‘agritech’ tag is Ninjacart’s big differentiator among prospective employees. Half its team, including the main co-founders, has an agricultural connection. Ashutosh Vikram and Sachin Jose are no longer actively serving as co-founders in their current roles but they remain integral members of the founding team.

Loganathan says the perception is that if a Google or Amazon or Netflix is going to get built out of India, it is probably going to be from agriculture because it is so unique to India. That also helps hire the right talent, he adds.

“Generally, IIM students don’t want to work in agri-based businesses. We think we made agritech a little more aspirational. Now we want to be the preferred employer in the entire start-up ecosystem,” says Vasudevan.

The team claims they haven’t fired anyone in the past 1-1.5 years of the start-up funding winter, which has triggered mass lay-offs in the ecosystem. The soonicorn, last valued at $815 million in December 2021, says they have enough cash to pay corporate expenses for 4-4.5 years. But they need funds to expand to 200 cities by FY25 from the current 70. The larger goal is to build an organisation that outlives the founders. Even though their entry into agriculture was accidental, they have all had different takeaways from the journey so far. But it converges at one point. “Agri is a $500-billion market,” says Vasudevan. “Solving this will leave a legacy for a lifetime.”

@SaysVidya