Frontier Markets drives life-improving products and services to rural customers, while creating digital livelihoods for rural women.
Frontier Markets connects India’s rural customers to products and services at their doorstep. 551 million rural customers lack access to financial, productive, durable products and services that can economically improve their lives. This is because product companies do not have deep enough infrastructure to access to rural customers; denying their ability to drive innovative solutions locally to their target rural customer.Frontier Markets drives the best selection of life-improving products and services to rural customers, while creating sustainable livelihoods for rural women. In partnership with existing SHG networks, we onboarded 4,000 women to become our digitally savvy women entrepreneurs called Saral Jeevan Sahelis. Our Sahelis use our assisted e-commerce and delivery platform, called the Meri Saheli app, to collect real-time data on customer, coordinate orders, and deliveries to earning an average of 65,000/- a year without having to leave their village, becoming local leaders, and decision-makers at home. Our local distribution hubs has a team of delivery field staff who ensure doorstep delivery daily, as well as coordinate after-sales service for product companies. This combination of high-tech and local teams, and product partnerships, has helped 700,000 rural customers access 1 million+ quality solutions in clean energy, agri, and homecare. The Meri-Saheli app was designed for rural customers and by our Sahelis, ensuring it’s easy to use. Bharat India’s digitization thrives, but to reach last-mile rural customers, an assisted solution allows for quick adoption, deep learnings, and optimal services to be delivered. Since COVID, we have partnered with 3 fintech companies to launch doorstep atm services, online payments, and financial services and leading FMCG companies to drive local essential goods doorstep deliveries. Achieving 97% conversion rates, and onboarding 2,000 new customers monthly. We have launched our 2.0 version for scale, adding AI capabilities to help Sahelis train to use the Meri Saheli app on their own. This will be a gamechanger, allowing us to partner with multiple SHG organizations at once who want to start the Saral Jeevan Initiative in their fields on their own. Our team has over 60 years of experience working in rural India in sectors like microfinance, telecom, and distribution allowing us to crack the rural last-mile challenge profitably.We envision becoming India’s largest high-tech, high touch platform delivering solutions to Bharat India connecting 100 million rural customers with 1 million digitally savvy women entrepreneurs.
Announced Date | Round | Money Raised | Number of Investors | Lead Investors | Post Valuation | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jul 6, 2020 | Seed | $2.25M | 5 | ENGIE Rassembleurs d'Energies initiative The Singh Family Trusts The Rise Fund | — | Detail |
Jun 24, 2019 | Seed | — | 6 | ENGIE Rassembleurs d'Energies initiative The Rise Fund | — | Detail |
Dec 31, 2015 | Seed | — | 1 | — | — | Detail |
Oct 11, 2011 | Seed | — | 1 | SeedFund.in | — | Detail |
Investor Name | Lead Investor | Funding Round |
---|---|---|
ENGIE Rassembleurs d'Energies initiative | Yes | Seed |
The Singh Family Trusts | Yes | Seed |
The Rise Fund | Yes | Seed |
SeedFund.in | Yes | Seed |
Beyond Capital | — | Seed |
Teja Ventures | — | Seed |
Acumen | — | Seed |
Rianta Capital | — | Seed |
Unilever Ventures | — | Seed |