INDIAN INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN TRADE

B2B MARKETING PROJECT

GROUP NO. 5
Topic: NINJACART

Group Members:

Dhrumil Daftary 17A

Fragmented and unorganized agribusiness ecosystem in India:

The agribusiness ecosystem comprises the business activities undertaken from farm to fork, covering the entire value chain,
from the supply of agricultural inputs, the production and transformation of agricultural products, and their distribution to
final consumers. This ecosystem has further expanded to segments, such as e-commerce and hyperlocal, propelled by
factors like swift urbanization, diet diversification, evolving consumer preferences, and expansion of food markets.

However, it remains largely unorganized and fragmented, with existence of multiple levels of intermediaries and
middlemen across the agriculture value chain. While 86 percent of the small and marginal farmers remain the primary
providers of food and nutrition to India, they remain constrained by issues like extremely small landholdings of less than
two hectares and limited access to technology, inputs, credit, capital, and market etc.

The overall agritech industry witnessed a revenue growth of approximately 85 percent during FY 2019-20. An Ernst & Young
2020 study pegs the Indian agritech market potential at US$24 billion by 2025, of which only one percent has been
captured so far. Another study by Bain & Company pegs this potential at US$35 billion by 2025.

With ever increasing internet penetration in the country, and rural regions being the primary driver of this growth, India
stands well equipped to adapt to changing methodologies in agriculture and transition from conventional business models
to various innovative business models propelled by agritech.

Out of the total projected agritech market potential of US$24 billion, the supply chain technology and output markets
segments have the highest potential in India, worth US$12.1 billion, followed by financial services (US$4.1 billion), precision
agriculture and farm management (US$3.4 billion), quality management and traceability (US$3.0 billion), and market
linkages-farm inputs (US$1.5 billion).

Supply chain, post-harvest management, and output market linkage segment:

This segment is the largest contributor to the revenue of the agritech industry in FY 2020 and also witnessed maximum
growth among all the segments during the same period. Players in the segment are involved in collection, processing,
storage, and logistics and distribution of agriculture produce from farmers to end customers or retailers. Inadequate rural
infrastructure and lack of traceability along the supply chain has prompted the intervention of agritech players in the
segment. Startups including Ninjacart, Waycool, Samunnati etc. are engaged in this segment.
Ecommerce in India:

E-commerce has transformed the way business is done in India. The Indian E-commerce market is expected to grow to US$
111.40 billion by 2025 from US$ 46.2 billion as of 2020. By 2030, it is expected to reach US$ 350 billion. By 2021, total e-
commerce sales are expected to reach US$ 67-84 billion from the US$ 52.57 billion recorded in 2020. India’s e-commerce
market is expected to reach US$ 111 billion by 2024 and US$ 200 billion by 2026. Much of the growth for the industry has
been triggered by an increase in internet and smartphone penetration. As of July 2021, the number of internet connections
in India significantly increased to 784.59 million, driven by the ‘Digital India’ programme. Out of the total internet
connections, ~61% connections were in urban areas, of which 97% connections were wireless.

The Indian online grocery market is estimated to reach US$ 18.2 billion in 2024 from US $1.9 billion in 2019, expanding at a
CAGR of 57%.

Logistics in India:

The Indian logistics sector is on a big growth tide. According to the domestic rating agency ICRA, Indian logistics sector is
expected to grow at a rate 8-10 per cent over the medium term. This is an improvement over the compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 7.8 per cent at which the industry grew during the last five years.
 Business Overview

Ninjacart helps farmers sell vegetables and fruits to retailers and restaurants in Bangalore. The startup picks up the produce
from the farmer’s fields and delivers it to the doorstep of businesses. It started in 2015 as an on-demand grocery delivery
company but pivoted to the current business-to-business model. It was started by Thiru and Vasu along with four other co-
founders.

The objective was to eliminate loss of food due to information barriers and inadequate infrastructure while establishing a
responsive distribution mechanism. They attempted to build a robust supply chain mechanism to transfer the SKUs from
the village-level Collection centers to the city-level Distribution centers achieving a high service level and speed with
optimal logistics cost. Ninjacart is constantly trying to improvise its current model to bring down logistics costs further to
pass on the benefit to farmers and customers

The Problem:
 Farmers experience price risk, information asymmetry about demand, distribution inefficiency, and receive late
payments.
 Retailers face problems like higher costs, low quality and unhygienic produce, high price volatility, and the
everyday hassle of going to the market.
 The traditional Supply Chain is highly inefficient, unorganized, and has a high rate of food wastage.

The Solution:
 It eliminated intermediaries by taking control of the Supply Chain by using technology and analytics.
 Ninjacart built reliable, cost-effective, and high-speed logistics and infrastructure to solve for inefficiencies in the
Supply Chain.
 On one end, farmers get better prices and consistent demand, and on the other end, retailers receive fresh
produce at competitive prices that are delivered to their doorstep.
Ninjacart - Revenue and Growth

Ninjacart revenue is currently estimated to be around $576.5 million. The company claims to have more than 100 collection
centres across the country to procure fresh goods. With a cumulative average growth rate of 400% since 2016, the
company has posted Rs 120 crore revenue in fiscal 2018-19 and turned operationally profitable. Valued at over $815 mn
Ninjacart is currently hailed as the highest valued agritech startup, as of January 27, 2022. Some of the Ninjacart growth
highlights are as follows:
 Ninjacart is hailed as the pioneers of tech-driven supply chain space for fresh produce
 The company is backed by a wide range of esteemed venture funds and companies including Accel, Qualcomm,
Tiger Global and others
 The Ninjacart Supply Chain is currently equipped to move more than 1400 tonnes of perishables from farms to
businesses, every day, and that too within less than 12 hours

Ninjacart’s USP: Creating a data-enabled supply chain

Vehicle Route Planning is key to driving the Ninjacart Supply Chain to move tonnes of fresh produce from farms to retailers
in less than 12 hours. Our algorithms automate the planning and optimization of logistics by mapping routes for vehicles
crisscrossing 15 states for delivering to customers daily across 7 cities.

The algorithm registers retail customer order details that were placed the previous day. It utilizes information such as
customer location, tonnage, crate count, delivery time window, etc. to determine the optimal delivery route.
In the same manner, the algorithm utilizes vehicle information such as vehicle type, start location, max crate capacity, max
no. of points, the time window in which it’s available, and average speed of the vehicle to assign the delivery route the next
day for door-to-door deliveries to stores.

After considering customer specifications and vehicle information, the algorithm perfectly optimizes the vehicle route
towards the customer locations. The route is determined to use the vehicles more efficiently in terms of vehicle usage,
occupancy, and positioning the orders to be delivered.

Ninjacart’s Vehicle Route Planning enables deliveries to happen seamlessly for 1000+ daily trips throughout the supply
chain.

There are specific problems that Ninjacart addressed with their data-enabled supply chain:

 End-to-end traceability on the supply chain: Every box or cart in the CC’s, FC’s, and DC’s at Ninjacart has RFID
(Radio Frequency Identification) tags attached. This has led to a strong brand establishment and continued trust.
 Forecasting demand: Ninjacart’s long-term vision is to improve efficiency in the supply chain and reduce wastage in
transit. For this, they have beautifully used technology such as Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine
Learning to forecast demands. Their predictive model takes many factors not limited to historical data, future
expectation, weather forecast data to predict weekly numbers at SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) levels to minimize
 errors as far as possible. This is the reason they have been able to maintain a 0.2% – 0.3% error rate for the past six
years.
 Educating farmers about the expectation: Using the technology and data available, Ninjacart educates them on the
expectation which benefits both the parties (farmers on the prices and amounts to harvest and Ninjacart to reduce
wastage) 

Over the years, the B2B agritech startup has been refining and innovating processes on a grassroot level to optimize their
efficiency. 

To reduce the time at the stops, the employees don’t wait for the boxes to be emptied. The carts are picked up when
vehicles are returning after making the drop. Since the carts are RFID tagged, it doesn’t have to go to the same distribution
center
Ninjacart has adopted the use of “dolleys” instead of traditional methods which helps them load and unload the boxes in
the fulfillment centers.

With these innovations and creating a robust data-enabled supply chain, Ninjacart won 'The Overall Supply Chain Solution
of the Year' in the Agtech Breakthrough Awards 2020, as a recognition of the company's consistent focus on
revolutionizing the fresh produce supply chain using our state-of-the-art technology and superior supply chain models.
 Marketing Strategies
Increasing brand visibility with social impact

While the startup has aced the game of building technology and data enabled supply chain, there is another initiative taken
by Ninjacart which shows how great business can create a huge social impact. In 2020 when the whole world struggled with
a pandemic caused by the deadly Coronavirus, Ninjacart stepped up to solve the problem of their comrades, the farmers of
India.

As the whole country went into lockdown, local vegetable and grocery stores also got closed. This affected the farmers a
lot. To solve this problem, Ninjacart launched an initiative named HTF (Harvest the Farms), where the customers could
directly buy from the farmers at a cheaper price.

With the help of their technology-enabled processes, Ninjacart identified the excess produce and buy it from the farmers at
a price that covered their cost. Then it sold those produce to customers at a lower price to reduce the wastage. This has
definitely put Ninjacart on everybody’s radar and the team deserves brownie points for quick thinking and creating a
beautiful solution to tackle the problems of the nation’s backbone, the farmers.  

Ninjacart aims to provide “zero residue food” (having a low maximum residue limit (MRL)) and has started to invest in
technology. The startup has beautifully divided into four different steps and named them FoodPrint, FarmPrint,
ResiduePrint, Affordability.

They have already launched FoodPrint on World food safety day (June 7, 2020) to better view the whole supply chain and
trace where the produce is coming from.
The startup is currently working on the beta phase of developing FarmPrint, which will help them get nearer to producing
zero residue food. Leveraging technology, they will be able to monitor the whole process better.
ResiduePrint is in its early stage of development, and the startup is trying to make the solutions durable and scalable.