Hyperlocal delivery start-up Grofers has acquired logistics service provider Townrush, closing its second acquisition in a week, said one person aware of the development. The Gurgaon-based company, owned by Locodel Solutions Pvt. Ltd, bought Bengaluru-based food tech start-up SpoonJoy (Emvito Technologies Pvt. Ltd) last week, Mint reported on 24 October.
The Times of India first reported the acquisition of Townrush.
According to the TOI report, co-founder and CEO of Grofers, Albinder Dhindsa said that they were able to onboard the SpoonJoy team entirely, and is picking some of the employees at Townrush. Both these businesses will be discontinued going forward as Grofers is not looking to get into the spaces the two companies were in.
Grofers is one of the most well-funded start-ups in the hyperlocal delivery segment, having raised $45 million from Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global Management.
Spoonjoy had raised a seed funding round in December 2014 from Abhishek Goyal, Mekin Maheshwari, Sachin Bansal and Sahil Barua and raised a $1 million Series A on May 1, 2015 from SAIF Partners. The start-up had run out of funds, and ceased its operations in Delhi and Bengaluru earlier in October.
Townrush was founded in 2015 by Tushar Bisht, Saurya Prakash Sinha, and Saurya Prakash Sinha, and had secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners in July. The start-up had to shut down its operations in six months as it failed to raise funds, and was unable to pay salaries.
More than 25 startups are currently operational in India in the B2B hyperlocal delivery space, some of the biggest funded players in the sector include Roadrunnr, Parcelled, Shadowfax, Pickingo, Opinio, and Grab.