A startup that is into daily hyper local delivery of fresh flowers, Prabhuji Online, has raised an undisclosed amount of funds in pre-series A round from Singapore and India based marquee angel investors. Earlier, it had raised raised a seed round from angel investors Ujjwal Deepak and Anshul Dave. Deepak has participated in the current round and increased his stake.
The company which has been doing around 2 million home deliveries since 2017 has done one million in the pandemic year alone. "The orders have gone up since the pandemic. People seem to have become more spiritual," said Manishpal Singh, Co-Founder and CEO.
Prabhuji Online is into delivery of pooja ingredients or samagri, too. The Company plans to expand into providing Panditji Services to home, organising devotional singers as well as religious and Spiritual Tourism very soon.
With the latest funding, the startup will now expand its footprint from being present only in Kolkata to different cities like Raipur, Delhi and Jaipur in 2021.
Rahul Tayal, ex- Director LG India and Croma, Saahil Mohta ex- Director of ANZ Grindlays Bank Australia, Prashant Tayal, Director of Deutsche Bank Singapore, Saumya Bajaj of World Bank, Jaspreet Bhatia, Managing Director of Ice Cube Holidays and Sumit Keshav with 15 years of experience in IT Strategy having worked for companies like Microsoft and Wipro are on-board as the investors. Oceans Bridge have been the sole advisor to the deal.
Prabhuji Online was conceptualised as e-retail to establish a connect amongst the fast moving consumers and products/services available in a very structured and organised manner.
This market can grow 70-80 percent year on year for next 5-6 years as there is massive increase in believers during this period, said Singh.
Future plans
The startup is focused on local innovation into supply chain, direct procurement from farmers and empowers women workers majorly. Around 85 percent of the work force is women. It has tied up with farmers for direct procure from farmers. A new technology that is being used is to have illiterate women make home deliveries by crunching the address into numericals.
What has worked for the startup is that most players are regionally focused and unorganised with no online presence. The estimated market size of the religious industry is estimated of 2.5 lakh crores. Around 95 percent of the Industry is unorganised and is ready for disruption by the use of digital channels because of increase in disposable income, ease of ordering and efficient delivery.
