This 20-Year-Old Aims To Revolutionise Distribution Of Consumer Products
From running his uncle's retail store to starting an FMCG growth platform roping in thousands of retailers and manufacturers, young entrepreneur, Pravas Chandragiri has come a long way.Â
The 20-year-old is the founder and CEO of Soptle, a SaaS company, which provides solutions to manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, reported Entrepreneur India.
Mr Chandragiri was just 17 when he joined a networking platform called RFT (Rural Future Technology) and managed to connect 1,200 kirana stores across nine districts of Odisha.Â
The report added that he was the youngest CEO of the venture then and introduced over 20 regional brands to local store owners.Â
The venture turned out to be profitable, with an annual turnover of Rs 60 lakh and prompted Mr Chandragiri to start his own company – Soptle.
According to Mr Chandragiri, Soptle eliminates the unnecessary components in a traditional FMCG supply chain and streamlines the processes.
"We at Soptle identified some of these consuming components as unnecessary. They are not even required for the movement of goods. We believe C&F, General C&F, Superstockist, Stockist as unnecessary consuming components," Mr Chandragiri said.
The founder added that last-mile components such as distributors and wholesalers are necessary consuming components and are crucial for general trade transactions. "So we used/enabled them in the FMCG supply chain to build a high growth and profitable business," he said.
Shedding light on how Soptle works, Mr Chandragiri said they provide country-wide distribution access to FMCG manufacturers and help them increase their income. Soptle uses its tech-enabled distribution channels and market linkages to help manufacturers scale their businesses.
Mr Chandragiri said that Soptle has a network of more than 50,000 retailers and distributors and recorded a monthly growth of 2-3 times.Â
Talking of plans, the CEO shared that they plan to scale up by 100 times over the next year, strengthen the technology team and expand the distribution network by 15-20 times. The next goal would be to achieve a global presence by 2024 using "our technology and playbook", he said.
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