Bengaluru-based hospitality chain VRO Hospitality on Tuesday said it has raised $3 million (Rs 22.5 crore) in a mix of equity and debt funding in a Series-A round led by CreedCap Asia Advisors, along with other undisclosed angel investors.
About 80 percent of the fresh capital will go into new projects, 10 percent on technology and team building, and 10 percent on cloud kitchen brands, Dawn Thomas, Co-founder of VRO Hospitality told Business Today.
Founded by Dawn Thomas, Safdhar Adoor and Sharath Rice, VRO Hospitality operates multi-format restaurants, cafes and lounges across 18 outlets in Bengaluru. The founders’ previous venture, an event curator platform SteppinOut, was acquired by Dineout, the restaurant services and reservation platform owned by Times Internet.
Post the acquisition, the founder trio was operating a couple of F&B outlets and saw an opportunity to snap up Covid-hit F&B brands. They acquired a number of F&B brands including PlanB, Café Noir and Fava, and brought all of its outlets into one company under VRO Hospitality. At present, VRO owns and operates eight brands across fine-dining, casual-dining, QSR and Café space.
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VRO, which currently employs 600 people, said that it is running at a 20% operating profit and its revenues have increased by 4.1x since October 2020.
Thomas said the company has 16 projects in the pipeline currently across 5 cities including Bengaluru, Goa, Mumbai, Kochi, and Chennai. It aims to open 30 outlets by the end of this financial year; scale some of its brands across India, Singapore and Dubai; and expand the team size to 1,200 employees.
The company has also launched three cloud kitchen brands to make use of its existing kitchens. “Cloud kitchens and food delivery as space have tremendous potential, and this was very evident during the first lockdown, and this format allows us to reach out to consumers in locations where a physical dine-in restaurant would not be a practical possibility. We have made four different brands that will operate from our existing kitchens at no extra cost. Once we hit about 30 outlets, we will have about 50-60 dark kitchens operating out of them,” Thomas added.
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