Nilekani invests Rs 30 cr in 10i Commerce Services

Invests Rs 25-30 cr in the Bengaluru startup, his first in an e-commerce firm

Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani has backed 10i Commerce Services, an e-commerce start-up which has started a model of getting many small vendors sell products and services on a language-friendly smartphone app for local users in remote parts of the country.

He has invested Rs 25-30 crore in the one-year-old start-up, founded by Amit Sharma and Apoorva Jois. Sharma and Jois had earlier built the private label e-commerce firm, Go Untucked. 10i is the first e-commerce firm that Nilekani, a prolific investor, has supported.

The Bengaluru-based start-up recruits small vendors in towns and villages that will assist locals to buy online through its app, ShopX. It offers in six local languages to allow non-English speakers to conveniently shop on the app. It has about 13,000 retailers and expects to touch 100,000 retailers across India in the next few months.

“I believe the future of India’s development and growth has to be domestic-led, services-led, and achieved by platforms that aggregate rather than by large monolithic companies. So, I see the future as platforms that aggregate taxis (Uber and Ola) or manufacturers (Amazon and Flipkart) or aggregate farmers, etc. This will also enable millions of people joining the formal economy,” Nilekani wrote in an e-mail response.

“I believe in 10i as it is going to aggregate lakhs of small retailers onto a platform and give them the best products, technology, supply chain and customer service capabilities. This will enable them to compete with organised retail and e-commerce.”