According to people familiar with the situation, Otipy, a farm-to-fork vegetable delivery company based in Delhi NCR shut down its operations last week. The company closed on Saturday, May 17, leaving around 300 employees suddenly without jobs.
At a town hall meeting last Saturday, Otipy co-founder and CEO Varun Khurana told the employees that the company could no longer continue its business. He advised them to start looking for other job opportunities.
“It was a shock. We went to the office like any other normal Saturday and were then informed that our livelihood was gone. It felt like the ground beneath our feet was gone,” a former employee said.
According to Inc42, Otipy has not paid its employees for the past one and a half months. When asked about the unpaid salaries, CEO Varun Khurana said during the townhall that the company will try to sell its assets to pay what it owes.
“We must look out for a job in this tough market again. We are still processing it,” another former employee said.
Inc42 has also found out that Otipy has not paid its pending dues to vendors.
“The problems started in October last year when payments started getting delayed. Initially, the management, including the founder, used to assuage us. However, since the beginning of this year, they stopped picking up our calls,” a vendor, whose payments for several months are pending, said.
The startup has told its customers that it is shutting down and promised to start refunding any remaining wallet balance within 60 to 90 days.
Emails and phone calls to Khurana went unanswered when this story was published.
Founded by Khurana and Prashant Jain in 2020, Otipy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Crofarm Agriproducts, was a B2B2C social commerce platform for vegetables, fruits, dairy, and other grocery items. It is used to deliver fresh produce to customers’ doorsteps.
The sudden shutdown happened five months after Otipy started testing electric carts in Gurugram to sell fruits and vegetables in person. At that time, Entrackr reported that the startup planned to launch 5,000 to 7,000 of these carts by 2026 in Delhi NCR and Mumbai.
Citing the reason behind the shutdown, one of the former employees told Inc42, “Otipy couldn’t secure the funding it was trying to raise, hence, they had to wind down operations gradually.”
In March 2022, Otipy raised $32 million in a Series B funding round. The round was led by WestBridge Capital, with support from SIG and Omidyar Network.
In total, Otipy raised $44 million through several funding rounds.
Otipy made ₹160 crore in sales in 2024, a 68% increase from ₹95 crore the year before. The company also cut its losses by 28%, bringing them down to ₹52 crore from ₹72 crore in FY23.
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