As on date, Fraazo’s reach extends to over 200,000 households in Mumbai and Pune, served both from its retail store as well as through the Fraazo app.

Amidst the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, while citizens are struggling to get delivery slots from bigger e-commerce players, Fraazo has successfully emerged as a trusted platform to provide farm-fresh vegetables and fruits across Mumbai and Pune with its express delivery (two hours) service by implementing rigorous safety and hygiene standards across the value chain. This consumer agri-tech startup is the retail brand of VnF, Mumbai’s leading player in the B2B perishables category providing farm-fresh vegetables and fruits.

“Fraazo was launched in 2016 as a fresh produce store in the posh locality of Powai with a clear vision of serving the customers with farm-fresh groceries delivered at the doorstep,” says co-founder Atul Kumar. “With satisfactory engagement and positive feedback from our customers, we launched our web portal in 2018. The web portal experienced good results with more than 100 new customers daily connecting with us.”

As on date, Fraazo’s reach extends to over 200,000 households in Mumbai and Pune, served both from its retail store as well as through the Fraazo app. Kumar informs, “Understanding the current requirements of our customers during Covid-19, where due to lockdown people aren’t able to go out scared about their safety and hygiene, we developed a society model and express delivery to meet the growing demand. We are growing at over 30% per month by revenue.” This model attracts the working section of Mumbai who can order groceries via a single tap on the mobile screen, he says, adding that Fraazo has been serving over 2 lakhs households and more than 60 housing societies in Mumbai and Pune.”

Fraazo sources fresh produce directly from farmers and FPOs across the Nashik-Pune belt. “We work closely with the community around our collection centres by turning them into micro entrepreneurs in value added services like sorting, packing, grading in addition to buying their produce. This community engagement has been the secret sauce to ensure seamless supply to Mumbai even in Covid-19 period,” he stresses.

Initially bootstrapped by co-founders Atul Kumar, Vikas Dosala, Sumit Rai and Aashish Krishnatre, Fraazo received pre Series-A funding of $2 million in May 2019 from Equanimity Ventures, GVFL, and the family office of Manish Choksi, non-executive vice-chairman of Asian Paints. It is all set to expand services across Mumbai, Pune, Thane and Navi Mumbai. “Currently we are available across four channels, The Fraazo app, Society Stores, Retail Store, and are one of the major brands on third party apps as well, that is, Swiggy, Zomato, Dunzo,” he says.

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Tech makes it fast & simple

According to the Fraazo co-founder, technology and digital channels have been positively impacting businesses across the country. Fraazo’s quick checkout interface allows customers to place orders with just a few clicks. Fraazo has built a real-time inventory platform for its dark stores which provides greater visibility of stocks of all products especially for customers who are opting for on-demand “Express Delivery” orders. Fraazo has leveraged technology by building a lot of internal applications that it uses at every stage of the supply chain improving the overall efficiency of the supply chain.

The startup works on a Dark Store-based model where every Dark Store (FSSAI certified) has the capacity to process almost 2-3 tonne of fresh vegetables and fruits on a daily basis. This enables Fraazo to service express delivery much more efficiently compared to competitors whose supply chains are structured on lines of large warehouses and have lost relevance for today’s consumer.

The digital channels have made the process easier for busy customers, hence, a large and growing online customer base and a 24/7 hygienic delivery promise.