Milkbasket's last founders left as Reliance folded it fully into JioMart

Milkbasket was a subscription commerce platform for daily needs, owned by Reliance Retail at the time of the exits.

$33M raised before the acquisition from Inflection Point Ventures, Mayfield India, Unilever, Beenext, Blume Ventures, Kalaari, Lenovo Capital and a clutch of angels.

Founded as a daily-needs subscription platform, Milkbasket raised $33M and saw three of its four cofounders (Ashish Goel, Anurag Jain, Anant Goel) leave in July 2021, after disputes between Goel and prime backer Kalaari Capital; Reliance Retail Ventures acquired it that October.

Under Reliance it expanded aggressively from Delhi NCR and Bengaluru to 32 cities, with its warehouses used for JioMart fulfillment; cofounder Yatish Talvadia spearheaded it as CEO for about 21 months. Its FY22 collections fell 19% to Rs 421 crore while losses shot up 98% to Rs 66 crore.

By July 2023, with Reliance having fully integrated Milkbasket into JioMart's business, Talvadia, COO Abhinav Imandi and CFO Gaurav Srivastava had all left; close to a dozen senior executives departed, and sources told Entrackr more resignations were likely.

Reliance wanted the subscription infrastructure — warehouses, delivery, customer base — more than the brand; full integration made the standalone team redundant.

Founding-team departures after full integration are common, the article notes, but they cascade: a dozen senior executives followed the C-suite out.

Milkbasket's financials were already deteriorating — collections down 19%, losses up 98% in FY22 — leaving little leverage to argue for independence.

Acquirers buy capabilities, not companies: once the warehouses and team are folded into the parent's machine, the startup's people rarely survive the integration.

As of 2023-07-25 Milkbasket operates inside JioMart across 32 cities with its warehouses serving JioMart fulfillment, and none of its original founders or early core team remain. Cofounder Ashish Goel had already moved on to launch farm-produce platform Sorted, raising over $5 million.