Gray Routes Innovative Distribution,
a Mumbai-based mobile solutions startup that targets the FMCG and other
sectors, has raised $100,000 in an angel round of funding from a group
of angel investors in Bangalore and Silicon Valley. The names of the
investors have not been disclosed. The funds raised will be used to
recruit talent and acquire patents for some of the company’s solutions.
Sahoo (second from left) and Patel (third from left) with the Gray Routes team in Mumbai
“The angel investors, who we knew from our professional networks,
represent more than 40 years of
experience in hardware and software
development and mobile solutions. We started conversations with them
around June,” Gray Routes founder Soubhagya Sahoo told
StartupCentral.
Sahoo, an IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, founded the company
this April with Sapna Patel, who earlier led business development at IIT
Bombay-incubated InOpen Technologies.
Post-funding, the immediate priority for Gray Routes will be to
recruit mobile app developers and project operations specialists to its
team. The startup currently employs 12 people across Mumbai and Delhi,
of which 10 are based in Mumbai. The number of employees will increase
to 16-odd over the next few months.
The company is developing enterprise mobile applications and
solutions that enable players in the FMCG, food services, telecom and
logistics sectors, to automate and monitor their distribution operations
in the field. The idea for such mobility solutions came to Sahoo while
he working on a rural sector focused project in its previous job with
Hindustan Unilever. As part of the FMCG major’s Shakti Distribution
Management System project, Sahoo’s jobs was to develop mobile-based
solutions that would enable the company’s rural saleswomen, dubbed
Shakti Ammas, to be more productive. One of the problems that he soon
discovered while working on the project that sooner or later the FMCG
company would lose contact with the saleswomen because it had no way to
track them.
Sahoo doesn’t expect to need to raise more funding for at least
another 12 months. The company has already signed on four FMCG companies
as clients and expects to start generating revenues shortly.
Incidentally, Gray Routes was also in the running for the current
batch of GSF Accelerator. However, it will now no longer need to join
the accelerator because “fortunately we have accelerated to paying
customers with the current funding,” says Patel.