Saral

Saral is a Mumbai-headquartered B2B platform that helps home-based entrepreneurs — referred to as homepreneurs, many of them women — bring their products into local retail markets. The platform addresses the main obstacles such sellers face in going to market: logistics, packaging, regulatory registration and access to sales channels. Saral takes samples of homepreneurs' products to local retail outlets and ensures that products carry the sellers' own names, branding and contact details.

The company currently works in the FMCG segment, focused on food items that are ready-to-eat or half-cooked with a typical shelf life of three to four months, such as pickles, spice powders, cake premixes, juices, syrups and namkeen. It requires sellers to package products properly and to carry FSSAI-registered labels, and assists with obtaining that registration. Onboarding is handled through the company's website and a WhatsApp contact line, with no onboarding fee. The founders have described plans to extend into additional verticals, including handmade crafts and handmade eco-friendly disposable items.

Saral is a brand operated by Fiducia Labs Private Limited, which also runs GetUnion, a marketplace providing collateral-free unsecured business loans to Indian SMEs via invoice financing.

Founding story

Saral was founded in August 2021 by Kamal Anandani and Amitesh Sahu, both alumni of the National Institute of Technology, Raipur, who began their careers at TCS in 2008 and worked in corporate roles in India and abroad before leaving to build a venture focused on small businesses. The founders have said the idea stemmed from observing women in their neighbourhoods attempting to contribute financially to their households and from the resistance homepreneurs face when families treat their work as a hobby rather than a business. Before Saral, they ran Fiducia Labs Pvt Ltd, launched in 2018, which provided mini-ERP software for homepreneurs; the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted many such businesses in Tier II and III cities, prompted the shift into physical sales and distribution.

Business model

Saral operates as a B2B intermediary between home-based producers and local retail outlets. It onboards homepreneurs at no onboarding fee, helps them with packaging improvements and basic regulatory compliance such as FSSAI registration, places their products on the shelves of local retail stores, and handles logistics, payment and packaging support. The company states it takes a commission only when sales are actually booked and levies no additional charges. Saral is a brand under the legal entity Fiducia Labs Private Limited, which also operates GetUnion; as of late 2022 Saral was funded by Fiducia and described as bootstrapped.

Commission charged on sales actually booked for homepreneurs' products, with no onboarding fee or additional charges. As of October 2022, Saral was bootstrapped and funded by parent entity Fiducia Labs Pvt Ltd, whose other product line, GetUnion, was described as cashflow positive.

Traction

In the year preceding October 2022, Saral reported gross merchandise value of over Rs 35 lakh with more than 100 homepreneurs onboarded, 1,500 retail partners and an employee base of 25. By January 2023 it was operating in four cities.