The Shop For Shopkeepers

By using technology, Jumbotail is gaining a foothold in the mammoth market of neighbourhood grocery stores

- Sayan Chakraborty

Karthik Venkateswaran has done his time in the trenches, literally, crouched behind sand bags, waiting for hell to break loose.

“Hum taabhi phi boriyo ke peeche baithte the, hum aaj bhi boriyo ke peeche baithte hai [we sat behind gunny bags then, and we sit behind gunny bags even now],” grins Venkateswaran, who retired from the Army about a decade ago. He looks at Ashish Jhina, who nods in agreement. Jhina, on his part, had shed his pinstripes and spent months crisscrossing the bumpy terrains of India’s hinterlands in trucks ferrying gunny bags stuffed with grains, while working on projects on the public distribution system for his former employer, Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

What Venkateswaran and Jhina are alluding to are the sacks of staples moved every day at their maiden venture, Jumbotail, a startup that lets neighbourhood retailers buy staples and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) online.

Jumbotail wasn’t a business conceived out of whack, over a drink or two. It was, in fact, an idea that Venkateswaran and Jhina had been nurturing long before their paths crossed at Stanford University in 2009, and took years to crystallise. During his stints in Manipur, Siachen and Uri among others, Venkateswaran had seen from close quarters how far local farmers were from the sunshine and rainbows. Similarly, Jhina, who hails from a family of apple farmers in Himachal Pradesh, had experienced their travails first-hand. Both had inferred that they should begin with aggregating farmers and giving them direct access to the market by cutting out intermediaries.