Jul 29, 2020

Mumbai-based food delivery startup Holachef Hospitality Pvt. Ltd has raised $5 million (nearly INR 32 crore) in a Series B round of funding from existing investor Kalaari Capital. As per reported in RoC (Registrar of Companies), SIDBI Venture Capital and India Quotient also participated in the round. The Series B round will be completed in two phases. First of which is in April and the second one will be in October. The total amount of funding has not been publicly disclosed by the company. The valuation of Holachef closes at Rs 143 crore. ADVERTISEMENT Holachef was brought in operation in September 2014 by two IIT Bombay Graduates Saurabh Saxena & Anil Gelra. The company brings the world’s best cuisines from the master chefs’ kitchen right to your doorstep. It has seen exponential growth and an increasing customer base. Saurabh Saxena, CEO, said: Focus was to get our processes to better serve the Mumbai market and create a more sustainable business model The startup acts as an aggregator of different chefs across the city and connects the customers with them. Both the platform mobile app or the desktop are provided to the customers. The company also claims to offer a new menu selection every day, as per its website. The meals are delivered with packaging that is recyclable in one meal per person style. The customer also gets the feature to choose the delivery time of the meal. The venture clocked Rs 11.3 crore in operating revenues in FY16 but, reportedly, faced a loss of Rs 24.8 crore for the same period. With operating costs touching Rs 35 crore in FY16, high customer acquisition costs has been a challenge for the company. This is an issue that is prevalent across the whole food tech sector. Holachef is planning to open its first customer-facing offline kiosk in the city in order to soften the blow of high acquisition of customer. Though Saxena maintains the move, taking any step like this is an experiment rather than a well-thought out strategy. Commenting on that, Saxena said: The offline kiosk is actually a distribution centre but more presentable and customer-facing so people can buy directly from there as well. If this customer-facing centre is beneficial for marketing, then we may look at opening new distribution centres which are similar. The raised fund is expected to be used for expanding the team and scaling logistic infrastructure to streamline the business. In February 2015, the startup raised $3 million (INR 2 crore) funding from India Quotient in the form of convertible notes. The startup in is competition with some venture in the similar field such as InnerChef, FreshMenu, Yumlane among others. Share this: