Ex-Zepto CXO’s Solgram Raises $1 Mn For Premium Grocery

Solgram, a Gurugram-based premium grocery platform, has raised over $1 million in a pre-seed round led by DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital. Hospitality entrepreneur Kapil Chopra, founder of The Postcard Hotel, also participated.

For Solgram, the round comes less than three months after launch. The company was founded by Shashank Shekhar Sharma, a former chief experience officer at quick commerce firm Zepto.

What Solgram Sells

Solgram’s assortment covers fresh produce, dairy, meat, seafood, bakery items and gourmet pantry products, along with emerging food brands.

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It also runs Mindful Mode, a health-focused category for products with cleaner labels, nutritional information and sourcing details.

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Customers can choose scheduled batched delivery or express delivery. The company has introduced private-label products in dry fruits and bakery, including croissants and bread.

The Cold Chain Is the Product

Solgram handles sourcing, quality inspection, storage, fulfilment and delivery itself, rather than working through third-party dark stores.

Its stores are temperature controlled, with dedicated zones for different product categories. Orders ship in sealed thermal packaging through dedicated last-mile infrastructure.

For Solgram, that is an expensive model and a deliberate one. In grocery, the cold chain is where quality is won or lost, and a platform that owns it can promise consistency that a marketplace cannot.

Why the Timing Is Sharp

Solgram’s launch comes as quick commerce companies face scrutiny over how they store and handle food.

Food safety inspections at quick commerce facilities in Hyderabad and elsewhere reportedly found expired products, spoiled vegetables, pest infestations, poor storage and inadequate cold-room maintenance.

For Solgram, that scrutiny is an opening. A premium grocery brand whose entire pitch is freshness can position itself against the category’s weakest operational link.

One Store, One Warehouse

Premium grocery is a harder business than value grocery. The customer is less price sensitive, but the expectation on freshness and packaging is far higher, and one bad order costs a weekly basket.

The other constraint is assortment depth. A gourmet pantry range needs imported and specialist brands, which tie up working capital in inventory that moves slowly.

Solgram is currently operational only in Gurugram, where it runs a single warehouse and a single store.

The company plans to expand across the National Capital Region first. It then intends to enter other Tier I cities in the coming months, per the company.

That footprint explains the round size. A million dollars does not build a national cold chain; it funds a second and third location and the technology to run them.

What to Watch

Premium grocery also invites competition from the large quick commerce platforms moving upmarket. Their advantage is delivery density; Solgram’s is that it owns the cold chain its rivals rent.

Solgram’s founder background is the reason investors moved fast. Zepto scaled a dense urban quick commerce network, and the operating discipline from that experience is directly transferable to a cold-chain grocery model.

Three things will decide whether Solgram becomes a brand or a well-designed pilot. The first is repeat rate in Gurugram, because premium grocery lives on weekly baskets rather than first orders.

The second is shrink. Fresh produce, meat and seafood generate waste when demand forecasts are wrong, and waste is the single largest margin killer in this category.

The third is the cost of owning the chain. Running your own cold stores and last-mile fleet protects quality and consumes capital, so the next round will be decided by whether the model gets cheaper per order at volume.