How 10-Min Delivery Crashed Otipy's Dream

The shutdown of the ag-tech startup, which raised 44 million, carries a forewarning: There is more pain ahead

- Sayantan Bera

Back in 2015, Varun Khurana, then 35, sold his year-old grocery delivery startup, MyGreenBox, to what is now known as Blinkit. Back then, it went by the name Grofers. Khurana, a computer science graduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, worked with Grofers for a year. Here, he learnt something interesting—fresh fruits and vegetables were just 2% of sales but accounted for a fifth of consumer complaints.

That's too much trouble for too little business, one might think. Khurana thought otherwise.

The problem appeared to him as a window of opportunity: to reduce wastage in the fresh produce supply chain and create value for both farmers and consumers. Besides, a farm-to-table fresh produce venture could be a high-margin business. Because what farmers sell for ₹10 per kg is often sold to consumers at two to three times the farm-gate price. So why not give it a shot? Bypass the many intermediaries in the supply chain, work closely with farmers on quality improvement, and deliver the finest produce to consumers.

A few years later, in early 2020, Khurana founded Otipy. Soon after, a pandemic-induced reset in consumer behaviour, fuelled a rush of venture capital. In less than two years, the startup raised an enviable $44.2 million from a flock of investors like WestBridge Capital, Inflection Point Ventures and SIG Venture Capital, among others.

In 2021 and 2022, agri-tech (ag-tech) startups received nearly $2.2 billion in venture funding—a phase now reflectively seen as "over-exuberance of speculative capital".

THE CLOSURE