Krave Mart, a quick-commerce (q-commerce) startup offering the delivery of groceries and other products in 10 minutes, has raised $6 million in a pre-seed funding round less than four months after its establishment, the company said on Wednesday.

According to a statement issued by the startup, the investment was led by China's MSA Capital and Russia’s ru-Net while German Global Founders Capital and Islamabad-based Zayn Capital co-led the deal. Other participating investors included Saison Capital, +92Ventures, 2AM, Mehta Ventures, Jeddar Capital, Lakson Investment and multiple strategic angel investors.

Krave Mart was co-founded in November by a team of former executives of Daraz, Foodpanda and Swvl, the statement said.

“The Krave team consists of rockstars from Daraz, FoodPanda and Swvl. We feel that the collective experience of this team will allow them to scale rapidly as they have no learning curve in the quick commerce vertical," the statement quoted Zayn Frontier Fund Co-Founder and Managing Partner Faisal Aftab as saying.

"We’re really excited to be a part of their journey to create the next generation of e-commerce & delivery in Pakistan,” he said.

According to the statement, Krave Mart, which launched its services in December, currently covers 25 per cent of Karachi’s population and aims to bring that number to 100pc by January 2022, before expanding to other cities.

At the moment, the company's product catalogue includes groceries, personal care products, health and beauty products and other everyday essentials, "promised to be delivered in 10 minutes through a network of dark stores".

“Pakistan has the potential for 500+ dark stores with high population density areas," Krave Mart COO Haziq Ahmed noted in the statement, adding that "our teams are lean, agile and efficient, which is helping us in scaling faster than any q-commerce player in the world."

"We aspire to build a sustainable business model starting with groceries and eventually incorporating fashion, beauty, electronics and other categories super customised as per the locality and consumer," he further said. "The 10-minute delivery model is going to be the game-changer for this industry and will set a bar for all the players to come in the q-commerce landscape."

Meanwhile, MSA Capital said in a statement that “Quick commerce will redefine how users shop for groceries in Pakistan, which today is a hyper-fragmented and inefficient [in terms of] experience. We've benchmarked and invested in similar models globally and believe Pakistan is a market ripe for disruption."