Supply Chain Management

Ninjacart: Disrupting Fresh Produce Supply Chain in India

Article Details

Pub. Date	: Sep 2022
Product Name	: The IUP Journal of Supply Chain Management
Product Type	: Article
Product Code	: IJSCM020922
Author Name	: Shwetha Kumari and G V Muralidhara
Availability	: YES
Subject/Domain	: Strategic
Download Format	: PDF Format
No. of Pages	: 28

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Abstract

In response to the broken agriculture supply chain caused by a lack of storage facilities, lack of transportation, and manifold intermediaries and lack of transparency and traceability, Thirukumaran Nagarajan launched Ninjacart, a leading agritech firm in India, in 2015, along with Sharath Babu Loganathan, Ashutosh Vikram, Kartheeswaran K K and Vasudevan Chinnathambi. After exploring the issues in the agriculture sector, Ninjacart shifted its operations from B2C to B2B, to leverage the profitable business opportunity. Ninjacart used advanced level supply chain algorithms that it developed in-house, predictive analytics, Big Data, IoT technology, and mobile applications to help farmers overcome the various issues they were grappling with. As of early 2020, Ninjacart became one of the largest fresh produce supply chain companies in India. With the Covid-19 pandemic leaving millions of farmers across India in the lurch, Ninjacart launched many initiatives. As part of its future plans, Ninjacart was banking on Machine Learning to improve operations. However, it faced several challenges. Having established itself as a prominent player, Ninjacart's next challenge was scaling up its operations while improving efficiency and profitability at the same time.

Ninjacart has been relentless about solving structural issues in India's fruit and vegetables supply chain. The company has reimagined the fresh supply chain.i

- Subrata Mitra, Founding Partner of Accel, India, February 5, 2019

Introduction

"We have eliminated the intervention of middlemen, backed the entire food supply chain with robust technology and analytics. We have developed a controlled distribution channel between the stakeholders eradicating inconsistences and price volatility," said Thirukumaran Nagarajan (Nagarajan), co-founder and CEO, Ninjacart, in an interview in November 2020.ii Launched in 2015 by Nagarajan, Sharath Babu Loganathan, Ashutosh Vikram, Kartheeswaran K K and Vasudevan Chinnathambi, the company started as a Business-to-Customer (B2C) grocery delivery platform. However, within six months of operations, the founders realized that their business model was unsustainable. Along with this realization, they began discovering the problems in the fresh produce supply chain.

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