While quick commerce in India has become synonymous with 10-minute deliveries — and the hottest play for startups and investors — FirstClub is taking a slower, more curated route. Yet just three months after launching its app, the 8-month-old startup has tripled its valuation.
At a post-money valuation of $120 million, the Bengaluru-based startup has raised $23 million in a Series A round (comprising more than 90% equity and the rest in debt) co-led by returning investors Accel and RTP Global. The round also saw participation from Blume Founders Fund, 2am VC, Paramark Ventures, and Aditya Birla Ventures. This new funding comes just eight months after FirstClub raised its $8 million seed round at a $40 million valuation in December.
E-commerce in India — the world’s second-largest shopper base — has surged to approximately $60 billio in gross merchandise value (GMV) and is expected to grow at 18% annually, reaching $170-$190 billion by 2030, per a recent Bain & Company report. Nearly one in every 10 retail dollars in India is projected to be spent online by the end of the decade. Over the past few months, the market has shifted from traditional e-commerce, where deliveries typically took two to three days, to ultra-fast fulfillment — chiefly driven by the rise of quick-commerce startups. This shift has even prompted incumbents like amazon-pilots-quick-commerce-service-in-india/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Amazo and Walmart-owned Flipkart to enter the fray with their own rapid delivery offerings.
However, FirstClub sees a gap: Rather than racing to be the fastest, the startup is betting on quality. It is targeting the top 10% of Indian households — roughly 20 million of them — with premium products and a curated experience.
Launched in June, the startup currently serves customers in a few localities of Bengaluru with four dark stores, which it calls “clubhouses.” Dark stores are fulfillment centers that look like retail stores but serve only online orders. The company stocks over 4,000 curated stock-keeping units from brands across packaged foods, fresh produce, bakery, dairy, and nutrition.
“Based the last three months’ data, it’s quite clear that consumers are happy to wait if they are getting a very differentiated selection, a good quality of products, a differentiated service, and a very hand-holding sort of an experience,” said Ayyappan R, founder and CEO of FirstClub, in an interview.
The startup currently sees an average order value of ₹1,050 (approximately $12) — about twice that of leading quick-commerce platforms when delivering groceries — along with a 60% repeat purchase rate, the executive told TechCrunch.
The founder hit the ground running with experience under his belt. Before founding FirstClub in December, Ayyappan spent over a decade at Flipkart, India’s largest homegrown e-commerce company, where he led teams at its subsidiaries Myntra (a fashion e-commerce site) and Cleartrip (a travel booking site). He was previously part of the team at Indian consumer goods giant ITC, focusing on strategies to expand grocery market and outlet coverage. Those experiences helped him quickly turn FirstClub from a concept into a business.
“In a span of six months, we have been able to build an end-to-end tech platform,” he recalled.
The startup has also established its own supply chain network and partnered with select brands to offer exclusive products. Currently, 60% of the products on its platform are exclusive.
“We are not indexing on the delivery speed, but we are saying that the products you get here, you would not find elsewhere, whether it is offline or online,” Ayyappan told TechCrunch.
FirstClub has also hired a third-party consumer panel to test products that will be featured on its platform.
“If I take an example of, say, paneer (cottage cheese in Hindi), 20 products from very, very different brands of paneer are tested by this consumer panel, which is done as a blind test, and whatever comes as the best, the top-three products, these will get onto the platform,” the founder stated.
The startup began its journey with grocery as the first category. It found that while the competition is quite intense in this space, with most quick commerce companies, including Blinkit and Swiggy’s Instamart, offering groceries through their platforms, there is room for a differentiated selection of premium-quality items, Ayyappan said.
Expansion plans fueled by fresh funding
FirstClub aims to expand beyond groceries into new categories, including children’s food, pet food, and nutraceuticals. It is venturing into cafes in the next 30 days, Ayyappan told TechCrunch, with a differentiated approach that will not include preheated food but instead freshly made items.
The startup also plans to enter the home and general merchandise categories within the next six months. This will include home decor, home essentials, home care, furnishing, and even utensils, the founder said.
FirstClub’s customer base is 70% women. As a result, the company not only curates products tailored to them but is also expanding into categories most relevant to their needs.
Sharing more customer insights, Ayyappan told TechCrunch that FirstClub’s customers are primarily in the income bracket of ₹1.5 million (around $17,000) annual household income. The startup prevents customers from checking out if their cart value is under ₹199 (roughly $2.40) to select the right customers.
Further, the app is designed for a browser-led experience rather than a search-led one, which is typical of most quick commerce platforms. This approach encourages users to spend more time exploring options, improving retention and enabling the startup to deliver a curated experience based on customer insights. The startup has also banned from its supply chain products containing over 200 ingredients that can harm consumers, the founder said.
“Everybody’s like, ‘I’ll offer a large selection and let the consumer choose what they want,’ versus the platform taking ownership — saying every single product it sells has to be top-notch quality,” Ayyappan noted.
FirstClub essentially wants to bring the kind of experience that retailers like Costco, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and TJ Maxx offer in North America, the founder stated.
“We want to be present to the consumers across multiple channels and multiple platforms,” he said. “Probably a slotted delivery, subscription delivery, offline, so all of these would come into the picture as well.”
With the fresh funding, the startup also plans to expand its clubhouses to up to 35, covering most of Bengaluru this year, before entering a new city.
“We might invite the consumers to our clubhouses as well to showcase this is how hygienic [they are], and this is how we maintain the quality,” Ayyappan said.
The startup currently has a headcount of 185 employees, including a 75-person operational staff.