The CA who went home and built a Rs 1,176 cr rural e-commerce startup

Prasanna Kumar walked away from the corporate life to solve the supply chain problem he saw as a child and built VilCart - an e-com startup for 100,000 kirana stores across rural South India

C. Prasanna Kumar grew up on a one-acre farm in K Shettihalli village in Karnataka's Mandya district, where his family cultivated paddy and sugarcane and relied on dairy income from a few cows. He also watched a different crop leave the village: people, including himself. “That migration pain stayed with me,” he said.

 

A few decades later, Kumar is trying to reverse that flow. As founder and chief executive of VilCart, he has built a Rs 1,176-crore rural e-commerce platform that supplies everything from daily essentials to branded consumer goods to 100,000 kirana stores across more than 30,000 villages in South India. A chartered accountant who gave up the boardroom for dusty roads, Kumar is betting that India's next phase of economic growth will emerge not from Mumbai or Bengaluru, but from the country's 650,000 villages.

 

Kumar moved to Bengaluru in 2005 to pursue chartered accountancy, then built a private practice that gave him hands-on experience in how businesses are structured and scaled. Around 2013, he turned his attention to rural supply chains, spending five years studying the problem before launching VilCart in 2018 and eventually surrendering his Certificate of Practice to focus on it full time.

 

India's e-commerce market is projected to triple from $70 billion in FY25 to over $200 billion by FY30, with Tier II–IV cities and rural regions expected to contribute more than 60 per cent of total e-commerce demand in 2026, according to ICICI Securities. Large players are circling the same opportunity: Flipkart has deepened partnerships with kirana stores for last-mile delivery, and Meesho's zero-commission model is pulling in value shoppers from smaller towns.

 

Kumar argued that rural India is often viewed as a single market, but the vast majority of the country's roughly six lakh villages remain underserved. Villages with populations above 10,000 account for only about 1 per cent of total villages, while those with 5,000–10,000 people account for about 3 per cent; the remaining 96 per cent represent nearly 76 per cent of the rural population and around 53 per cent of India's total population. Demand for FMCG, groceries, electronics, home appliances, apparel and cosmetics is strong in these markets, he said, but distribution remains the key challenge.

 

VilCart connects manufacturers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and rural businesses with kirana stores across villages. Rural kirana stores traditionally spend three to four days a month travelling for procurement, facing fragmented supply chains, limited product access and lost business time. VilCart addresses this with doorstep delivery via a mobile-first platform featuring inventory management, billing tools, credit access and data-driven demand prediction. It is supported by over 1,600 workforce driving hyperlocal execution.

 

VilCart reported revenues of Rs 1,176 crore in FY26, up from Rs 1,120 crore in FY25. The company recorded a negative EBITDA margin of 6.8 per cent in FY25, which improved to around 4.5 per cent in FY26. The private label segment has grown from 5 per cent of revenue in April 2025 to 15-18 per cent in FY2026, with a stated goal of reaching 22-25 per cent by FY27. But the market will eventually ask: when does Bharat commerce become a profitable business, not just a socially important one?

 

Drawing on his CA background, Kumar said the company kept EBITDA losses to about 7 per cent at their worst — significantly lower than losses seen across much of e-commerce — and built the business with roughly $25 million in capital. Profitability improvements are being driven by backward integration, direct sourcing from farmers and farmer producer organisations (FPOs), and a growing private-label business. Kumar said the company aims to become monthly EBITDA positive within the current financial year.

 

That push is increasingly supported by data. Kumar said artificial intelligence (AI) is particularly useful in rural markets because demand is highly fragmented and hyperlocal, enabling the company to track crop cycles, harvest timings, festival spending, village-level purchasing behaviour and economic profiles. VilCart is deploying AI tools including voice-based ordering in local languages, conversational order placement, AI-enabled stock-keeping units (SKU) matching and store image recognition.

 

“If our executive photographs a kirana store, AI can identify which brands are stocked, local brand penetration and regional demand patterns,” said Kumar.

 

Yet, Kumar said, human trust remains central to the model. Rural consumers continue to value emotional connection and human interaction, and technology must navigate local accents, colloquial language and cultural nuances. People in regions such as South Karnataka use specific greetings and expressions that AI still struggles to interpret effectively.

 

This trust-first approach also shapes how VilCart has embedded itself in rural communities. The company's telesales centres in Mandya, Bagalkot and Chikkaballapur employ about 200 rural women, many of whom are school dropouts or lack qualifications for formal employment. The company provides flexible work arrangements, stable monthly earnings and dignified work environments, while also engaging owner-driver logistics partners and supporting micro-entrepreneurship models. Kumar said VilCart ultimately aims to have self-help groups operate entire warehouse and packing infrastructure.

 

Higher diesel costs affect logistics, Kumar said, but the larger risk is agrarian — weak rainfall, poor crop cycles and fertiliser shortages. Rural consumers tend to cut discretionary FMCG spending when prices rise, while demand for essential goods remains more resilient. To preserve relationships in price-sensitive markets, VilCart sometimes absorbs part of the inflation burden and is decentralising warehouses to reduce transportation costs.

 

The firm has raised over $30 million from investors including Asia Impact SA, Nabventures, Spark Capital and AI-X B.V, as well as a few angels including Prashanth Prakash. Despite that capital, market penetration remains limited — Karnataka stands at roughly 50 per cent and Tamil Nadu at about 10 per cent — leaving significant room for expansion.

 

The company's next phase will focus on deepening its presence in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and piloting operations in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Kumar said VilCart is currently raising a Series B round of Rs 200 crore–Rs 250 crore and is exploring a potential IPO in FY28–FY29.

 

“We are not operating like a conventional urban commerce company," Kumar said. “We are building rural India together with rural India.”