Ninjacart-Disrupting Fresh Produce Supply Chain in India

Ninjacart-Disrupting Fresh Produce Supply Chain in India
Case Code: LDEN179
Case Length: 20 Pages
Period: 2015-2021
Pub Date: 2022
Teaching Note: Available
Price: Rs.300
Organization : Ninjakart
Industry : Agriculture & Forestry
Countries : India
Themes: Entrepreneurship, Business Models, Business Environment, Supply Chain Management
Ninjacart-Disrupting Fresh Produce Supply Chain in India
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts

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 had become one of the largest fresh produce supply chain companies in India. It was sourcing vegetables and fruits from farmers from more than 20 Indian states and delivering to more than 17,000 local kiranas and restaurants across 7 major cities – Bengaluru, Pune, Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Chennai, and Hyderabad – every single day, in less than 12 hours. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic leaving millions of farmers across India in the lurch, Ninjacart launched an initiative in May 2020 called ‘Harvest the Farms’ to help farmers facing a difficulty in finding buyers for their fresh produce to directly sell to consumers. Further, in June 2020, Ninjacart launched ‘FoodPrint’, a food traceability infrastructure project, that could capture and help users trace the end-to-end footprint of fruits and vegetables, from farm to home. In October 2020, Walmart and the Flipkart Group announced that they would make more investments in Ninjacart. As part of its future plans, Ninjacart was banking on machine learning to improve operations as handling the huge supply of the fresh produce and Keeping frauds away was difficult for the company. However, Ninjacart faced several challenges such as stiff competition from other market players such as Jio Mart, Jumbotail, Waycool, and Udaan; scaling the business; and increasing efficiency and profitability. Having established itself as a prominent player in the fresh produce supply chain market, Ninjacart’s next challenge was scaling up its operations while improving efficiency and profitability at the same time.

Issues

The case is structured to achieve the following teaching objectives:

  • Analyze the major problems in the agriculture supply chain management in India and identify opportunities for interventions.
  • Analyze Ninjacart’s business model.
  • Examine the impact of Ninjacart on the agriculture supply chain ecosystem.
  • Discuss how Ninjacart played a proactive role in addressing farmers’ problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Develop a strategy for Ninjacart to improve its efficiency and productivity.

Contents

Keywords

AgriTech; Ninjakart; Indian farm; Fresh produce; Supply chain; FoodPrint; Indian agriculture; Agriculture technology; business model; Food wastage; Thirukumaran Nagarajan; distribution inefficiency; Startups; Funding

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