InnerChef, a Gurgaon-based food tech startup that delivers both ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat meals, has raised $2.5 million in a Series A led by the Japanese early stage fund, Mistletoe, and including M&S Fund Singapore and additional existing investors.
Launched in 2015 by partners Rajesh Sawhney, Sanjeev Singhal, and Bal Dighent, InnerChef currently delivers 100,000 meals per month in seven cities across India, The company plans to use the new capital to strengthen its brand in its top four markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, expanding its number of kitchens and its hyper-local dessert delivery segment of its business.
“Desserts in InnerChef are taken care of by women entrepreneurs, who are mainly neighborhood chefs,” says Sawhney. “We are looking to enable 10,000 women entrepreneurs who can make a livelihood on our platform. We want to focus on the first four cities for the next six months.”
Inner Chef raised previous funding totaling Rs 11 cr (US$1.65 million) from a collection of investors including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, redBus co-founder Phanindra Sama, Shaadi.com’s Anupam Mittal, and GOQii founder Vishal Gondal at a time when many footech startups including TinyOwl, ZuperMeal, and EazyMeals have had to shut down amid lack of investor confidence.
This latest raise is the first investment in India for Japan’s Mistletoe, which was launched in 2013 by Taizo Son, the younger brother of Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank and mobile gaming company, GungHo.
“Mistletoe explored investment opportunities of the corrective impacts on food and farming sector,” said Atisushi Tairo, chief growth officer, Mistletoe “We believe that InnerChef would become the crucial model of improving the food and farming ecosystem in India.”
Commenting on the round, InnerChef co-founder Rajesh Sawhney said, “I believe this deal is about laying the foundation of a long-term partnership between two unique organizations – InnerChef and Mistletoe that have a shared vision of future with regards to food and agriculture.”
In March of this year, InnerChef acquired two rival food tech startups – EatonGo, based in Bengaluru, and Flavour Labs, based in Gurgaon. Both acquisitions were being positioned as “acqui-hires”, or moves to acquire the teams rather than the business or technology each company offered. However, both additions also broadened InnerChef’s reach.
At the time, Sawhney told ET Tech, “EatonGo will give us a foothold in Bengaluru that has emerged as the fastest growing food market in the country because of its cosmopolitan outlook and higher disposable income. With Flavour Labs, we will leverage the learnings of running mobile kitchens and introduce a food truck in every city we are present in.”
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Lynda Kiernan
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