EatFit parent entity Curefoods has raised $13 million Series A to add six more brands to its existing tally of four cloud kitchen brands, by the end of 2022.
“The idea is to have at least two brands targeting each of the five major food ordering categories such as daily eating, biryani, pizza, desserts and snacks,” founder Ankit Nagori told BusinessLine. Started in 2020, Curefoods currently operates brands like EatFit, Yumlane, Aligarh House Biryani, and Masalabox.
The recent funding round was led by Iron Pillar along with the participation of Nordstar and Binny Bansal. Angel investors such as Adil Allana, Rashmi Kwatra, Lydia Jett, and Kunal Shah also participated in the round. This round brings the total money raised by Curefoods to a total of $20 million between Seed and Series A. The company is also looking to close a $10 million debt raise in the coming weeks.
In 2020, CureFit had spinned off its food business Curefoods which operates EatFit and CureFit cofounder Nagori increased his stake in the food business following an equity swap.
Prior to the spinoff, EatFit had consolidated its presence across 15 cities to focus on Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Coimbatore. Today, Curefoods claims to have over 25 kitchens across four cities in India including Delhi, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Coimbatore.
“Online food delivery in India is highly fragmented with almost no Indian-origin brands amongst the top ten across the country. In the next decade, there is an opportunity to build and incubate brands across cuisines with meaningful scale. There will be multiple $50Mn brands in the future in the online delivery space and we believe we are in a great position to build, acquire, and own many of them,” said Nagori.
He added that use of technology, precise digital marketing, profitable growth, and great brand building will be the key ingredients for success here. While taking on a brand under the Curefoods umbrella, the company also looks at the possible synergies between the brand’s existing kitchen.
On the backend, these synergies would include multiple brands sharing ingredients, working in shared kitchen spaces, and getting access to better packaging negotiation, sourcing negotiation, and economies of scale among other things. While, on the front end, one of the benefits will be that all the communication with food delivery companies like Zomato, and Swiggy will be done through one partner instead of multiple brands negotiating their separate prices and rate cards.
Nagori noted that the company is also working on a digital marketing platform that will leverage spends across all brands and not just one. It will enable all Curefoods operated brands to be on the same platform and bid for different keywords and AdWords.
Commenting on the funding, Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner at Iron Pillar said, “Online food delivery is a space which saw a significant long term positive shift in adoption over the last 18 months. Globally, many very large food businesses are created over time through roll up of food brands. We believe that the same can be replicated in India today, with online delivery providing the distribution depth and efficiency.”