Business-to-consumer (B2C) startup Wheelocity recently secured $15 million in funding, with Lightspeed India Partners leading the round. Investors Alteria Capital, Anicut Capital, and founder Selvam VMS also contributed.
With this new funding, Wheelocity plans to expand its services to 20,000 towns and villages in southern India within the following year. Founder Selvam shared that the goal is to grow the user base to 10 million.
Previously, this Chennai-based company focused on supplying fresh fruits and vegetables to business-to-business (B2B) clients, such as quick-commerce companies. Last year, it shifted to a hybrid model, targeting semi-urban and rural customers through both online and offline channels.
“For people living in semi-urban and rural areas, to get access to products as basic as fresh produce, they have to wait for as long as seven days. That’s how broken the supply chain is. We are trying to build near urban level convenience for semi urban and rural consumers by building a very high frequency, direct access network,” said Selvam.
Wheelocity’s B2C platform allows users to place orders digitally or buy products directly from a fleet of three-wheeled electric carts, which deliver fresh produce right to their doorsteps. The fleet includes 1,500 electric vehicles and over 2,000 delivery partners. The company sources produce directly from farmers and stores it in 60 micro-warehouses, called “pit stops,” to streamline delivery.
In 2022, Wheelocity raised $12 million from Lightspeed, reaching a post-money valuation of $63.3 million, as reported by Tracxn. Anicut Capital also joined that funding round.
“The next wave of India’s commerce growth will come from beyond the top 200 cities,” said Rahul Taneja, partner at Lightspeed. “Wheelocity’s deep understanding of semi-urban markets, combined with their technology-first approach, positions them uniquely to capture this massive opportunity.”
Lightspeed, which has invested in over 500 startups like Razorpay, Zepto, Oyo, and Darwinbox over the past two decades, manages $25 billion in assets worldwide.
