Frsh.com, an on-demand meal service providing platform which differentiates itself by the promise of providing fresh meals, is witnessing fresh influx of funds in the vicinity of $1 million as a bridge round from Mumbai Angels, Mayank Bhangdia – co-founder of Roposo, and the company’s existing investor – Kae Capital (via VCCircle).
The funding will be utilized by the company to expand its services to other cities across the nation. It is planning to start operations in Mumbai as well as in Bangalore in the next three months.
Founded in January 2014, Frsh.com is an on-demand food service startup in the healthy eating segment. The company prepares around 20 items such as sandwiches, salads and beverages at its three kitchens in Noida, Gurgaon and Delhi.
Earlier, in February, the company had raised $5,18,000 in seed funding round from early-stage investors India Quotient and Kae Capital.
The company is assuring customers to delivery food within 60 minutes. The company is also claiming that it will reduce delivery time by partnering with hyperlocal delivery startups. The orders received are automatically allocated to appropriate delivery slots, which are 15 minutes apart.
Badal Goel, CEO of the company, said,
After reaching a reasonably big scale in Gurgaon a couple of months back, we realised that we would need to make some important changes in our operations if we want to reach a similar scale in other cities. This funding gave us the necessary fuel to make the changes without worrying too much about numbers.
Food delivery has been more of a turbulent segment — eyeing it from investor perspective. There was a time in the early half of 2015, when we saw massive money being pumped into a new food delivery startup, almost everyday.
However, investors have now quickly started to ask questions relating to revenue from such models, considering that these startups and related service operate on very thin margins.
Moreover, recent large-scale layoffs by heavily backed companies like Zomato have further created skepticism regarding the kind of business models one can possibly operate in this segment. It will be interesting to see how this space pans out.
