This start-up by a 20-year-old college dropout raises angel funding

Soptle, a Software as a Service (or SaaS) led B2B retail commerce platform, has raised an undisclosed angel round led by Soonicorn LLP and a clutch of marquee logistics leaders including Vaishnav Shetty (executive director and Chief Digital Officer of Allcargo Group); Pirojshaw Sarkari (CEO of Gati) and Saurabh Agarwal (Ex-Founder Fitso, which was acquired by Zomato) among others.

Launched in May 2022, by 20-year-old engineering school dropout Pravas Chandragiri, Soptle is a micro SaaS-led B2B retail commerce platform that helps consumer goods companies distribute products by using its network of over 15,000 retailers across the country. It also has about 400 distributors and 60 manufacturers on its platform.

The funds raised will be used to expand Soptle’s distribution network across the country, scale product capabilities and expand the team as the venture aims to build an operating system powered SaaS platform for the Indian FMCG community.

By digitising and incentivising FMCG manufacturers, Soptle has created an asset-light one-stop-platform that eliminates the unorganised and inefficient middle men from the traditional supply chain.

This assumes significance as there are an estimated 10-15 million kirana stores in India, commanding a $500 billion FMCG market.

“We have a unique distribution approach to building India's largest FMCG distribution SaaS platform that activates critical connections between FMCG manufacturers and distributors/wholesale as well as retailers,” said Chandragiri.

“It also enables FMCG manufacturers to supply products to millions of retailers all over India, creating powerful, positive change for these stakeholders,” he added.

Chandragiri comes from a small town Balasore in Odisha. He started working at the age of 12 while helping his uncle scale up his kirana store. That’s when he realised the pain points of such stores and also understood the inefficiencies of the FMCG supply chain.

He started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 17 and used all his learnings and network to start up Soptle.

According to Chandragiri, the assortment of products, regional brands, poor margins and zero-bargain power were some of the bigger pain-points of small neighbourhood stores.