PremiumNEW DELHI : FreshtoHome, a Bengaluru-based online fresh fish and meat retailer, Monday raised $20 million in a Series B funding round that was led by Iron Pillar and also included Japanese investor Joe Hirao.
The startup also announced that it crossed $30 million ( ₹200 crore) in annualized 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.
Iron Pillar is a specialist venture growth fund investing in startups beyond Series A in India. Speaking on the investment, Anand Prasanna, managing partner of Iron Pillar said: “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. This patent-pending, direct sourcing commodities exchange platform is a game-changer in the industry and is very hard to replicate."
FreshtoHome will utilize the funds 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 and 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.
Said Shan Kadavil, chief executive of FreshtoHome: “We are just getting started and with a $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.
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 the UAE. FreshToHome.com currently receives over 14,000 orders and processes around 20 tonnes 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 $11million. The 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.
The company currently has 650,000 customers across nine 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.
