Procol raises $1 mn seed funding from Blume Ventures, Zerodha's Rainmatter

The start-up, which helps food retailers procure inventory online, has clients such as Bikanervala, Big Bazaar and Haldiram's

Procol, a food commodities procurement start-up, has raised $1 million from from early-stage investor Blume Ventures and Rainmatter Capital, a fund managed by Zerodha.

Procol in an online platform aimed at food retail and packaged-consumer goods companies to procure inventory and manage supply chain. According to the company, it helps clients with live auctions, market rates information and intelligent commodity insights. 

The Delhi-based start-up was set up in 2018 by Gaurav Baheti, who was earlier with iSpirit Foundation, and Sumit Mendiratta. The duo had also set up an apps design company called Spars.  

"Gaurav, Sumit and the Procol team are rethinking the future of procurement,” said Blume Ventures managing partner Karthik Reddy, in a statement.

“Agri commodity buying in India is a $400 billion large broken market riddled with inefficiencies. The rapid adoption of Procol’s auction platform by India’s leading agri buyers and sellers is a clear sign that the platform is fulfilling a long-standing market gap and is thus making significant headway in one of the largest markets in India today," he added.

The company’s clients include Bikanervala, Big Bazaar and Haldiram’s, according to its website.

“Commodities in India mostly run physically, and Procol is changing that. I was convinced of this when I first saw Procol’s product suite — the team is building an exceptional product for scale and there’s clear value for food enterprises to adopt them,” said Nithin Kamath, founder Zerodha, who led the investment through Rainmatter Capital.