Quicklly is the leading online marketplace for Indian groceries and food in the U.S., operating as an aggregator and infrastructure provider across all the major e-commerce platforms and brick-and-mortar retail. Founded and based in downtown Chicago, the company had a strong year in 2025, scaling significantly and increasing revenue run rate by more than 200%. And that’s just part of the story. (Full disclosure: Quicklly is a portfolio company in Great North Ventures’ Fund II.)
Quicklly was founded in 2018 and has had significant growth over the past five years. It has built deep integrations with platforms including Instacart, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, Amazon, and Walmart, serving as the Indian-grocery “operating layer” for these ecosystems.
Another key metric that shows how Quicklly scaled this past year: the number of stores integrating its technology went from 74 to 320, more than a 4X increase – all while the company improved its operational efficiency significantly, particularly in executing large format orders, according to the founders.
Three Core Business Lines
Quicklly’s rapidly growing online grocery marketplace is just part of the story. It also has own CPG brand of ready-to-eat meals, exclusively manufactured with a partner capable of producing 10 million meals per month for the U.S. and Canadian markets. In 2025, this ready-to-eat meals initiative saw rapid success on Instacart. Partnerships with major retailers including Costco and ALDI, announced in January 2026, have shown sales performance beyond expectations. For this branded products business, Quicklly is now in more than 500 stores, and larger accounts are driving more volume. This “offline” revenue for Quicklly grew almost 300% year over year.
The company’s third business line is its “Direct-From-India” (DFI) platform. This service enables Indian brands to reach U.S. customers through Quicklly.com. Co-founder & COO Pritesh Velankar, who manages sales and growth, reports the company already has 60 brands signed up to date, with more in the pipeline.
Rapid Onboarding
Quicklly simplifies the integration process for all the major e-commerce platforms, making these platforms accessible for less tech-savvy stores. The company can onboard stores with its technology within 48 hours, compared to the six months it would take them with a platform like Instacart.
“The 320 contracted stores we ended 2025 with represents approximately 10% of all South Asian stores in North America,” said Keval Raj, Co-founder and Co-CEO, who focuses on marketing and strategy. “By Q4, we were onboarding roughly 40 stores per month compared to our 20-store velocity in Q2 2025, while continuing to maintain 99% store retention.”
What about the company’s profit margins? “Scaling is actually improving our margins, not compressing them, which is what we designed our flywheel to do,” said Hanish Pahwa, Co-founder and Co-CEO. “And, with our marketplace expansion, including the Aldi and Costco rollouts, we are confidently pacing toward reaching profitability by Q4 2026.”
Data Playing a Major Role
Quicklly has competitive advantage because it controls storefronts, placement, and merchandising across platforms. Its aggregated data across hundreds of stores gives it insight into product velocity, placement performance, and out-of-stock rates. This data advantage is a key driver of exclusivity with large brands.
Leveraging Fintech Technology
In late 2024, Quicklly announced a partnership with Visa to deliver a simplified solution that transformed the way individuals send and receive money to family and friends in India and the South Asian subcontinent. It said at the time that this partnership would contribute to the innovation needed in real-time cross-border payments, and that it aimed to be the leading, cutting-edge, 24/7 payment channel, globally, to and from India.
Coming next from the company is an even more exciting fintech innovation called “Quicklly Pay.” Via a mobile app to be available in Q1 2026, anyone can send money online from the United States, transferring funds securely with zero hidden fees and fair rates. The company promises fast, reliable, and hassle-free transfers every time. “It will enable sending money at the best price available back home, wherever that might be,” said Quicklly COO, Pritesh Velankar. Quicklly Pay features blockchain-powered transfers to enable transparent and efficient cross-border payments. It lets anyone send money home securely with advanced encryption and multiple layers of security at every step. “With trusted banking partners and a dedicated security team, transfers are processed instantly, so your loved ones never have to wait,” he said.
Looking Forward With Confidence
“Our goal is to be the largest and number-one South Asian marketplace in North America by the end of 2026,” said Hanish Pahwa, co-CEO. “Our historical trends and the great work our team has done over the years puts us in a great spot to hit that goal.”
The company’s strategic Investor and partnership pipeline is one of its biggest developments. “Several major Indian conglomerates are now in formal diligence to lead our next funding round,” said Pahwa. “These groups don’t just bring capital — they bring manufacturing depth, product pipelines, distribution, and credibility.” In parallel with diligence, many of them have begun North America partnership conversations that will start to go live as soon as the end of Q1 2026, he said, “helping us create a direct-from-India supply-chain advantage that no competitor could replicate.”
And that ties directly into Quicklly’s long-term strategy: “To be the U.S. bridge for Indian brands both online and offline,” said Pahwa.
Continued expansion into non-Indian ethnic formats is another initiative in the works. “We’re planning a pilot in the Hispanic market,” said co-CEO Keval Raj. “It’s a big opportunity — more than 21,000 independent stores that have a very limited digital presence. We’ve already expanded our contracts with Uber, Instacart, and Doordash to get this ethnicity included so we can service them using the same technology infrastructure.” Another expansion opportunity is liquor delivery, a major new market. More than 50% of independent U.S. liquor stores are run by Indian Americans.
More Scale, Smarter Distribution, and Deeper Partnerships
Quicklly has evolved from a niche ethnic-grocery marketplace into a scaled distribution, data, and commerce infrastructure platform. With defensible integrations, virtually zero churn, strong unit economics, and accelerating traction at national retailers, the company is entering a breakout phase where execution — not demand — is the primary constraint.
“2025 has given us more clarity and confidence,” said co-CEO Hanish Pahwa. “The model has started to work the way it was designed with years of effort. Predictability is showing up in our 5-year trend line, our margin improvement, and the caliber of strategic groups now leaning in. The next chapter is about more scale, smarter distribution, and deeper partnerships that make Quicklly the trusted gateway for South Asian products and eventually ethnic products in the U.S.”
