Chennai-based rural e-commerce startup Inthree Access Services has raised ₹28 crores in series A funding led by early-stage Indian venture capital firm Ventureast. The round also saw participation from Orios Venture Partners and the Indian Angel Network‘s IAN Fund.
The fresh funds will be used to strengthen its technology platform, enhance its last-mile logistics, along with strengthening its presence in the 10 states where it operates.
Inthree was founded by Ramachandran Ramanathan, Karthik Natarajan, and Narayanan in 2013. Operating under the brand name of Boonbox, the startup has an omnichannel business model. It provides access to products and services to the people in the hinterland through its platform. The startup claims to have sold more than 1.5 million products to over 1 million rural households, worth ₹1.5 billion in GMV.
Talking about the investment, Amitabh Shrivastava, managing partner, IAN Fund, said, “India sits on a goldmine in terms of the next set of users who will be transacting online and that will comprise mainly in the rural areas where Internet penetration is 15% and growing exponentially. Inthree is perfectly placed to make most of the upcoming surge in this trend as it has already established itself in the market and has an unfair first mover advantage in this space.”
Some other players catering to the Indian rural e-commerce include StoreKing, IndiaBuys, among others.
Indian e-commerce market is expected to be worth $200 billion by the year 2026. As more and more rural India gets digitized, a large portion of these users will be connected to the internet, providing a new opportunity for e-commerce players to increase their market. As the urban e-commerce market gets saturated, e-commerce players are expected to focus on these new users to expand their market share.