Thursday, March 28

Food-tech Startup Holachef Raises Rs 2 Crore Funding

Mumbai based diamond manufacturer and distributor Laxmi Diamond Pvt Ltd’s Ashok Kumar Gajera has invested Rs 2 crore in food technology startup Holachef a financial daily reported.

Holachef is a food delivery service from its “innovative food combos”. The funding is raised at the same valuation as its $5 million Series B round which was held in April, last year. The food delivery startup had raised around $5 million from its existing investors- Kalaari Capital, and was participated by SIDBI Venture Capital and India Quotient, as per the filings with the Registrar of Companies and documents.

The Series-B round was completed in two rounds- valuing the company at Rs 143 crore. The startup has been working to build up its team and scale its logistics infrastructure to streamline the business.

Holachef last secured funds in December 2017, when it secured around Rs9 crore through a mix of equity and debt funding from IPI Technolab Pvt Ltd, a Rajasthan-based software publishing and consultancy firm.

Ratan Tata had also shown some interest in the startup and invested an undisclosed sum of amount in Holachef. The food-tech startup had raised Rs 20 crore in a Series A round led by Kalaari Capital and India Quotient.

In the FY 17, Holachef registered a 65percent rise in its operational revenues at Rs 18.51 crore, up from Rs 10.9crore in the previous year. In FY16 the company posted a loss of Rs 24.8crore, which further increased up to Rs 26.2crore inFY17.

Holachef was co-founded by Saxena and Anil Gelra in 2014, and aimed at delivering ready-to-eat home cooked food to its consumers. The company has its own chefs that provide home-cooked food from Indian to global cuisines. Holachef is currently operating in Mumbai only, delivering its services in over 100 regions.

The food-tech startup is seeing some bright days, with players like Zomato and Swiggy has received some big tickets. Just a couple of days back, Swiggy had raised a funding of $100 million in a Series-F round by Naspers and Meituaan-Dianping, a Chinese local life information and trading platform.

Swiggy has so far partnered with over 20,000 restaurants functioning in 10+ cities all across the country. Earlier in May, Naspers had infused a funding of $80 million, valuing it at $400 million. Swiggy has so far raised over $255 million.

Another big player, Zomato had raised $200 million in a funding round from Alibaba’s payments affiliate- Alipay, earlier this month, as disclosed by its majority stake holder Info Edge.

InfoEdge currently holds 45% stake in Zomato, and informed Bombay Stock Exchange that the funding round includes a $50 million secondary share sale to Ant Financials, which will dilute its stake in Zomato to about 30.9% post the capital infusion.