Indore based Anaxee Digital Runners, India’s largest last-mile outreach & data collection network, has recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Orios Venture Partners, one of the leading seed-stage venture capital funds. Anaxee’s other investors include LetsVenture, Keiretsu Forum, GAIN, and Swan Angel Network.
Anaxee builds last-mile outreach & data collection network of Digital Runners (shared feet-on-street, tech-enabled) to help internet/mobile businesses scale to remote parts of India. With India, being the primary market, Anaxee is more focused towards operating in Tier-2, 3 and 4 towns and villages of India. The infusion of new funds will be utilized by the company in the next 12 months for technology development, generating sales and upskilling and training their last-mile partners, the Digital Runners.
Founded in 2016 by Govind Agrawal and Arti Agrawal, Digital Runners is the second start-up founded by the duo, after their previous stint in a Biometrics and Aadhaar services-based venture where they also got a US Patent for Vein Recognition Technology in their name. Currently, Anaxee has presence in around 26 States, 540 Districts, 11000 Pincodes and a network of 10000+ Runners. Till now, they have served 1000+ Clients and collected millions of data points. Additionally, the platform is also available to distribute products and services in Tier-2 & 3 towns and act as a sales lead generation platform for their clients.
Commenting on the fund raise, Govind Agrawal, Co-founder of Anaxee Digital Runners, stated, “Anaxee is India’s Reach Engine! Be it Changlang in Arunachal Pradesh to Navsari in Gujarat, Or Kargil in Kashmir to Hutbay in Little Andaman. We make Reach to all these places as easy as ordering a pizza, just on click of a button. We are a first principles company and solving access related problems for real Bharat using technology and last-mile partner network. We empower these local micro-entrepreneurs with opportunities in their own geography and positively impact their lives.
Anup Jain, Managing Partner, Orios Venture Partners said, ” At Orios, we see the next wave of unicorns and businesses coming from expansion of reach into the Next 300mn consumers beyond the top cities. These new customers, armed with a smartphone and an internet connection, are attracting all kinds of businesses who want to scale in Tier-2 & 3 cities. Anaxee vast network of Digital Runners becomes an enabler for businesses to start operations across India in very structured and fool proof manner. What Ola did with cabs, Anaxee can do the same for data and make data from remotest parts of India available on-demand.
Further, the founders previous background in identity space and experience in the Aadhaar ecosystem attracted us to back this team.”, Anup added
Paras Malhotra of LetsVenture says, “It has been heartening to see the conviction of angel investors from our platform on a ‘Bharat’ play being validated by Orios Venture Partners. We believe as Anaxee adds more services to its ‘Digital Runners’, the platform will truly scale and service a much needed gap in the market of actual ‘reach’ beyond just the big ‘network’ numbers.”
Abhishek Sanghvi, Swan Angel Network, who is also one of the first investors in Anaxee “While most startups we meet are focused only on tech-driven innovation, Anaxee has established their leadership in setting up very tight ops to go along with their tech & AI stack, to provide a unique end-to-end solution for clients who require highly-distributed presence across India. Govind and Arti’s commitment to prevail in such an extremely challenging space will pave the way for a bright future ahead”.
Post Jio-era, Indian corporations & all internet/mobile startups are looking beyond the top-40 cities of India for business opportunities and searching for a distributed channel to penetrate into remotest parts of the country. Anaxee tech platform and vast network of Digital Runners help these companies to scale by providing last-mile reach and assistance in customer acquisition, onboarding, lead generation, data collection, KYC and survey. They serve customers across various sectors like Udaan, DeHaat, Welspun, Sony Networks, Faircent, etc.
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