Flipkart, Walmart increase investment in Ninjacart to enhance logistics chain

BENGALURU: Ahead of the rapidly approaching festive sales season, e-tailer Flipkart and parent company Walmart announced a fresh round of investment in Ninjacart—a business-to-business (B2B) supply chain infrastructure and technology solutions start-up. 

This follows in the wake of the investment made by Walmart and the Flipkart Group in December 2019, with the companies focussing on the grocery and fresh produce segments and implementing a farm to fork presence through their tech capabilities. 

Partnering with Flipkart and Walmart, will give Ninjacart access to a wider customer base, the company said. The logistics start-up has leading  private equity investors such as Tiger Global, Accel, Tanglin, Steadview, Syngenta, Nandan Nilekani and Qualcomm among its backers.

According to Flipkart, the Ninjakart partnership will help enhance offerings in the grocery segment and scale up its hyperlocal model—FlipkartQuick. 

The two have already worked on various pilot projects during the Covid lockdown, such as apartment deliveries which also included a ‘Farm to fork’ pilot with Flipkart.

“The e-grocery market in India has seen tremendous growth over the past several months as people have increasingly taken to ordering groceries and fresh produce online. We will continue to make investments to offer the best produce to our customers and support livelihoods and sustainable growth for local farmers, producers and the supply chain ecosystem. 

Our pilots and current business engagement with Ninjacart have been encouraging as we leverage technology to address changing consumer behaviour across the country,” Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer, Flipkart Group, said.