Nothing beats the joy of biting into a luscious mango or devouring plump juicy lychees during the hot summer months. And, what could be better than having these delivered right to your doorstep? That’s exactly what Fruitmania.in aims to do — deliver fresh fruits to your doorstep, much like you could get groceries. Started by Ravi Theja, a former software engineer, the online portal has a wide variety of fruits on offer, including some exotic ones. His USP though, is the subscription model he offers — mini, medium and monster packs per month.
“Fruitmania.in came about because we wanted to encourage people to gift each other fruits instead of flowers. With this in mind, we set up a shop by the same name in Nungambakkam in January 2015. Unfortunately, the December floods wreaked havoc and we had to shut shop. However, we continued to run our online operations. Today, that has become a huge hit with customers, who enjoy the convenience of having fresh fruits delivered home on a regular basis,” says Ravi, who has another IT employee, Arun Mathew, as strategy partner in Bangalore. “This was a zero-investment start-up. We soon plan to expand to corporate deliveries. We have a sustainable business model and are confident that there is a lot of business potential out there for us,” says Ravi.
While the website lists various local and exotic fruits, it also has packages such as the low-sugar package and summer special. “We’ve also launched a subscription model, which is proving to be a hit. The fact that it is hard to find quality fruits such as lychees, cherries, dragon fruit, mangosteen and rambutan at local fruit stores drove us to bridge the gap. We have tied up with a reputed procurement partner and are able to address this need. On an average, we process about a thousand orders a fortnight, and this tends to increase during peak season. Most customers place bulk orders for fruits such as lychees, which are in season right now,” explains Ravi.
Ravi, who studied the fruit market for three years before plunging into the business, says that they prefer to procure fresh fruits and deliver them the same day. “We close orders by 10 p.m. every day. The fruits are procured the next morning and all deliveries are completed by the same evening, since we don’t believe in storing fruits.”
The entrepreneur also gives high importance to quality checks before the fruits are packed and sent out for delivery. “Often, a box of cherries or strawberries will have plump ripe fruits on top, but those in the lower layers might be unripe, overripe or even rotten. We want to avoid that. We also encourage customers to taste the fruits at the time of delivery and then accept the parcel,” he says.
While Fruitmania.in has no fixed time slots for deliveries, they keep in mind the customer’s time preferences. “Most people request delivery either early in the morning or over the weekend. We are happy to oblige. We didn’t want to restrict them to just a few slots in a day. Currently, we deliver fruits to areas as far as Mogappair, OMR and Siruseri,” he says.
Fruit a day
Fruits can be ordered at www.fruitmania.in
Customer care: 89392 41338
