FreshToHome is India’s largest e-commerce venture in the fish and meat space.
Bangalore – FreshToHome.com, the Bengaluru based online fresh fish and meat retailer, has secured USD 20M in a Series B Funding round led by Iron Pillar with the participation of Joe Hirao, the founder of ZIGExn, Japan. Tarun Khandelwal of Add Advisory Partners was the company’s advisor on the round.
FreshToHome also announced that it crossed USD 30 Million (INR 200 Crores) in annualized direct to consumer sales, making it the largest such venture in the Fish and Meat e-commerce space in India. Also at 30% month on month growth, Freshtohome is among the fastest growing e-grocery companies in India. FreshToHome has expanded to new markets in India such as Mumbai and Pune, and also ventured into the global market by launching its operations in UAE. FreshToHome.com currently receives over 14,000 orders and processes around 20 tons of fresh food produce every day.
FreshToHome’s Series B comes in hot on the heels of their recent Series A round where they had raised $11M. Series A funding round was led by CE-Ventures, the corporate venture capital platform of Crescent Enterprises, a UAE headquartered conglomerate. Existing Investors, including CE-Ventures, Al Nassar Holdings, Massar International – a large UAE based growth investor and others participated in the $20M Series B round.
FreshToHome recently went offline and opened several outlets in Bengaluru and Chennai. The company currently has 650,000 customers across 9 cities in India and internationally across the UAE. Their disruptive commodities exchange platform, technology enabled cold chain capability and supporting logistics capability, allows them to directly source from 1500 fishermen and farmers and deliver quickly to consumers. In addition, they also ensure capital and technology support to fish farmers to enable large scale fish production across the country empowering numerous small and medium sized farmers.
The funding was led by Iron Pillar – a specialist venture growth fund investing in start-ups beyond Series A in India. Speaking of the investment, Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner of Iron Pillar, said, “This is our first investment into the food-tech space and we wanted to be certain of the value offered by the brand and strong technology enabled moats for the business. FreshToHome’s brand proposition has been to provide 100% Fresh food with 0% Chemicals, not an easy thing to achieve in India at a large scale. They have thoughtfully created the largest and fastest perishable supply chain for Fish and Meat in India to make this happen. By smartly using big data and machine learning, they have created a sustainable supply chain, which offers a fair price to consumers, fishermen and farmers, for their premium produce. This patent pending, direct sourcing Commodities Exchange Platform is a game changer in the industry and is very hard to replicate. We love companies that solve such hard issues in large market segments in India through unique tech enabled moats!”
FreshToHome will utilize the funding to expand into other cities in India and the UAE. The company will also use the funds to diversify their product offerings in various other fresh and chemical-free food categories, such as fruits and vegetables, cold pressed oils, organic cow & buffalo milk, dairy products, organic staples and other healthy food products. These products will eventually be distributed across e-commerce platforms, retail outlets and other channels across multiple geographies.
Shahnawaz (Shan) Kadavil CEO of FreshToHome says, “I’m thrilled about the support we are receiving from the investor community – I think this is a reflection of the market strength in India and the disruption that technology can bring about in modernizing India’s food supply chain. We are just getting started and with a USD 250 Billion market size in front of us in the perishables category alone in India – this is just the tip of the iceberg. We recently crossed 14,000 orders a day – this reinforces our belief that if you give consumers safe to eat food at an honest price, you can create a brand loved by thousands thanks to our loyal customers, fishermen and farmers who trade or farm directly on our platform!”
Apart from expanding the range of the products that FreshToHome offers today, the company will continue to reinvent the supply chain process in other categories of food. FreshToHome ensures that the food sourced and processed on its platform, goes through very high levels of scrutiny for hygiene and food safety with checks across all aspects of the process including sourcing and distribution in a chilled supply chain between 0 to 4 degree centigrade.
About FreshToHome.com
FreshToHome.com is India’s largest online fresh Fish and Meat store. It was founded in 2015, by Shahnawaz (Shan) Kadavil and his team of co-founders with the sole purpose of making fresh Meat and Fish free of added chemicals, available to everyone. FreshToHome’s success is driven by a commitment to their brand promise – 100% Fresh, 0% Chemicals. They operate out of 10 cities – NCR, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Dubai (and broader UAE), Calicut, Trivandrum, Trichur and Cochin; four states in the country – Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Delhi/NCR; and execute over 14,000 orders per day, clocking a volume of 20 tons of Fish and Meat daily. FreshToHome.com has a wide array of products ranging from 150 varieties of fresh chemical free Fish, antibiotic-residue free Chicken, Tender Mutton, ready to cook products and much more.
Media Contact
For Iron Pillar, Sanjna Tulsiani: sanjna@ironpillarfund.com
Iron Pillar is a venture growth investor, focused on enterprise and consumer technology businesses that are building from India for the world. Since 2016, Iron Pillar has been working closely with extraordinary Founders to help them scale profitably from ~$10 million to $100 million+ in revenues. The firm has consistently executed this strategy across its marquee list of portfolio companies, including BlueStone, CureFoods, FreshToHome, Servify, Uniphore and others.
Beyond capital, Iron Pillar works alongside Founders to accelerate their business growth across three key areas: (1) expanding business development to global markets; (2) providing guidance on go-to-market strategies, including access to C-level talent; and (3) facilitating strategic capital introductions. The firm is dedicated to partnering with Founders on their journey to build transformational, resilient and valuable companies.
Iron Pillar has offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, Dubai and Palo Alto. Additional information is available at www.ironpillarfund.com