At the Connecting Ideas With Money on the 29th of Ocotober, 2021 founder Naveen Kumar pitched Sriphal – a D2C startup based out of Bangalore whose vision is “to provide fresh, pure and healthy food and drink options to society at large”.
Apps:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sriphalmobileapp
Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sriphal/id1523143396
“As a start, we have been delivering trimmed tender coconuts to various apartments in Bangalore for the last one and a half years. We have generated Rs. 50 lakh in revenues since inception. We deliver to 80+ apartments. We are a subscription-based service where customers can place their requirements on our Apps released on both IOS and Android platforms. Currently 3K+ customers place their orders on the App and we deliver close to 600 coconuts in every delivery cycle. Some of our USP’s include, ‘no delivery fee’, ‘minimum of 2 Coconuts per flat’ and ‘quality guaranteed at lowest price’. All our customers who have joined us are through referrals,” says Naveen.
The startup was conceived in September 2019 when Naveen quit his job at Honeywell. The plan was to get into the food and beverage business using vending machine business. The team placed an order for five automated Orange Juice Vending machines which they planned to install in various corporate cafeterias. That is when Covid hit.
The installations were stalled. During this period the team started working on a protoype of a tender coconut vending machine. This idea also did not take off due to uncertainties with Covid19. It was at this time that an ex-boss of Naveen suggested he deliver tender coconuts to apartment complexes, it being summer. The team quickly jumped on the idea and connected with apartment societies through their Whatsapp groups. On their first day they got 80 customers enrolled and delivered 250 coconuts. This convinced the team that the idea had legs.
It was during this experience that founder Vijay Kamble joined Naveen and ex colleague from his time at HTMT 20 years ago. Vijay had just sold his Hero Honda dealership in Belgaum and had moved to Bangalore. He was looking for some interesting opportunities and the startup Sriphal interested him.
“He has amazing skills around Operations, Supply chain, Team Building which was complimentary to my skills on Strategy, Finance and Marketing. I have over 20+ Year of experience mostly in Finance and Customer Service”, says Naveen.
The team are now focussed on leveraging social media platfomrs to increase sales and are working on ironing out quality issues around the product.
