Online grocers and their picky customers; Good Monk rethinks nutrition

Amid a consolidation wave in edtech, upGrad and Unacademy have decided the price wasn’t right. 

Serial entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala has confirmed that talks between upGrad and Unacademy have been called off after months of negotiation and back-and-forth over price expectations.

Both companies now have choices to make. upGrad has the option to pursue other acquisitions, including targeted higher-education assets, and to continue preparing for an IPO.

Meanwhile, Unacademy will have to manage stakeholder relations and explore alternative strategic options, such as seeking other buyers.

Meanwhile, the ecommerce sector has seen a set of senior exits. Meesho’s general manager for business has resigned, marking the first departure of a senior executive at the firm since its blockbuster market debut last month. On Thursday morning, the company’s shares opened higher, and later settled 5% down in the lower circuit at Rs 164.4 apiece on the NSE.

Flipkart, too, said it had appointed Gunjan Bhartia as Senior Vice President of Business Finance for eKart, the company’s logistics arm.

Moving on, with rising food costs, restaurants around the world are utilising tech and good old-fashioned culinary ingenuity to make the most of food scraps—a sustainability statement in gourmet form.

Others are doing away with chefs entirely. Meet the $2 billion experiment where robots make you lunch. 

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• Online grocers and their picky customers
• Good Monk rethinks nutrition
• Alok Menon on comedy, queer survival

Here’s your trivia for today: What did people often say for photos before “cheese”?

In-depth

Online grocers and their picky customers

Today’s consumers are a picky lot, especially when it comes to food. So, when they pick up an apple to eat, a lot of factors have to fall in line: vibrant colour, optimal ripeness, and absence of any surface defects. Even the slightest imperfection or blemish can deter them from buying the apple.

Wellness-focused customers are willing to pay more for high-quality fruits and vegetables delivered at their doorstep. This has prompted a host of players to launch premium offerings, Swiggy and Zepto being the latest. However, balancing quality and speed is a challenge.

Niche customers:

• Quick-commerce platforms Swiggy Instamart and Zepto recently expanded their product portfolio with pilots of ‘Nectr’ and ‘Harvest Store’, respectively, offering high-quality fruits and vegetables and an assortment of gourmet offerings. 
• According to Yeshu Bansal, Founder of Freshly, the demand for these new services isn’t necessarily about seeking out “gourmet” or “exotic” items, but more about filling a basic service gap that quick commerce giants have failed to address: the ability to replicate the experience of hand-selection.
• Balancing quality and speed requires tact and strategic prioritising. Players are tackling this with distinct business models and priorities, which include a mix of instant delivery, delivery in a few hours, and next-day delivery.

Funding Alert

Startup: Nitro Commerce

Amount: $5M

Round: Series A

Startup: Aivar

Amount: $4.6M

Round: Seed

Startup: &Done

Amount: $3M

Round: Series A

Startup

Good Monk rethinks nutrition

Good Monk, a Bengaluru-based nutrition startup co-founded by Amarpreet Singh Anand and his wife, Sahiba Kaur, develops easy-to-mix, clinically validated nutrition powders that address common vitamin and mineral gaps in Indian diets.

“We realised that the problem isn’t just what people eat, but how nutrition fits into their everyday life. If it feels like medicine or a chore, it won’t work. Our goal was to make nutrition invisible yet effective, something people consume naturally without thinking about it,” says Singh, Co-founder and Chief Nutrition Officer.

Eating right:

• The first product, the Family Nutrition Mix, targeted ages four to fifty. Early adoption revealed strong uptake among households with older adults, prompting age-specific variants, including formulations for those aged fifty and above.
• Good Monk has served around 4.5 lakh customers and operates at an ARR of about Rs 30 crore. Growth has been nearly thirtyfold over 20 months, driven largely by repeat usage and word-of-mouth.
• It competes with brands like Nutribuddy, HealthKart, OZiva, and Sugarfit. What sets it apart is its focus on seamless integration into daily food rather than standalone supplementation. 

Interview

Alok Menon on comedy, queer survival

Trans comedian and performer Alok Menon has been moving around a lot lately. Currently in India, and less than a day after landing in Mumbai, SocialStory get on FaceTime to talk about collapsing political promises, queer survival, collective grief, and why laughter feels strangely indispensable at the end of the world.

Tired, jet-lagged but undeterred, Menon gets straight to the point of what’s driving them to tour: “Shit has really hit the fan.”

News & updates

• Valuation: Spangle, an AI ecommerce startup founded by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, raised $15 million in a Series A round, valuing the company at $100 million. Led by NewRoad Capital Partners, the funding comes over a year after the Seattle-based startup raised a $6 million seed round at a $30 million pre-money valuation.
• Inquiry: China will investigate Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of AI startup Manus to assess its compliance with export control laws. Meta acquired Singapore-based Manus last month as the US tech giant looks to integrate advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products.
• Launch: BMW will launch 10 new cars in India this year, including EVs and its popular MINI brand, while boosting local sourcing to lower costs as luxury car sales in the country remain stubbornly small.

What did people often say for photos before “cheese”?

Answer: When Richard Beard, Britain’s first portrait photographer, began taking family portraits, he told his clients to say “prunes”.

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