THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Rapidly rising m-commerce platform Jiffstore has become the second company incubated in Startup Village to be acquired, after it was bought by PepperTap-an on demand grocery delivery service headquartered at National Capital Region. MindHelix, which focuses on smartphone application development, was the first company to be incubated at Startup Village and acquired. It was acquired by AskMe portal in 2014.
A grocery delivery solution, Jiffstore was incepted in October 2013 at Startup Village and nurtured there in the first couple of months after which it moved out to Bengaluru where it went on to partner with 120 supermarkets and get 1,00,000 registered users. A chunk of its operations is mobile apps-based, driven by its patented intelligent customer specific engine Jiffbot and ensures delivery of grocery items at the customers’ doorstep within 90 minutes of ordering.
After the December 21 acquisition in an undisclosed amount and stock deal, the JiffStore’s 40-strong team will join PepperTap’s Bangalore office and its headquarters in Gurgaon. Founded by Shameel Abdulla, Satish Basavaraj, Aswin Ramachandran and Sandeep Sreenath, Jiffstore, with its zero inventory-based model, used to get a daily order of around 1,000 with an average basket size of Rs 600, giving big-time competition to rival firms such as Bigbasket, Zopnow, and Grofers in Bengaluru.“Our simple and effective platform has got retailers and customers hooked. By joining hands, we hope to deliver an exceptionally delightful experience to the customers on a wider scale at an even more rapid pace,” said Shameel Abdulla. The Jiffstore app was chosen as one of the Top 20 Made-in-India apps by the Apple Appstore and the Best App from India in 2014 by the Google Developer Group.Kerala IT Principal Secretary P H Kurian said the Jiffstore success story was yet another instance of how business can be built by intelligent application of ideas beyond the purview of textbooks.