Curefoods, the parent company of cloud kitchen startup EatFit, has raised $13 Mn in Series A round led by Iron Pillar. Nordstar and Binny Bansal also participated in this round. Besides, angel investors Adil Allana, Rashmi Kwatra, Lydia Jett, and Kunal Shah also were a part of it.
The fresh influx of funds will be used to acquire many more digital food brands across geographies, the statement said. Curefoods also will look at expanding its cloud kitchen footprint across multiple cities and build backend technology to manage its multi-brand, multi-city kitchens footprint, it added.
Curefoods, which commenced operations in 2020, operates brands like EatFit, Yumlane, Aligarh House Biryani, and Masalabox. It has over 25 kitchens across four cities in India and plans to have 100 kitchens by the end of the year and with an annual revenue run rate of $20 million. Curefoods has been acquiring and incubating multiple cloud kitchen brands in the last few months.
Last year, Ankit Nagori had acquired a 70-80 percent stake in Eat.fit, the cloud kitchen firm meant to promote healthy eating, in exchange for his 7.6 percent stake in Cure.fit. Eat.fit had scaled down significantly mid-last year, shutting down operations in 12 cities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eat.fit has about Rs 2-3 crore revenue a month.
While firms such as Rebel Foods have built a slew of cloud-kitchen brands by starting each brand themselves, Nagori plans to acquire up-and-coming online food brands listed on food-delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato. This approach is similar to the one followed by US-based breakout startup Thrasio, which acquires top-rated and fast-growing sellers on Amazon, helping them with technology, digital marketing and sales chops to turbocharge growth.
While this approach is relatively new in food delivery, these e-commerce roll-up plays have also caught fire in India, with over $300 million being invested in such startups, based only on their promise and little else.
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