Barely a day after CoinSwitch Kuber announced its entry into the unicorn club, another Indian startup has managed to surpass the magical $1Bn mark- a testament to the country’s fast growing startup ecosystem. Cloud kitchen startup Rebel Foods has attained the status after raising $175 million in a round led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
The startup is now valued at $1.4 billion, a massive increase from its previous valuation of about $800 million last year. The round also included participation from existing investors Coatue and Evolvence.
With this, Rebel Foods has become the 31st Indian unicorn in 2021. This comes amidst a record inflow of capital from global investors such as Tiger Global, SoftBank, Sequoia, and Temasek, which led to the exponential group of the start-up sector in the world’s second-largest internet market.
According to the startup, which aims to go public in the next 18-24 months, the proceeds from the funding round for global expansion, scaling up its technology, and adding to its existing portfolio of 45 food brands, which includes names such as Behrouz Biryani, Mandarin Oak Ovenstory Pizza, and Faasos. Rebel Foods had also partnered with the likes of Wendy’s and Mad Over Donuts. It currently operates over 4000 “internet restaurants” in over 10 countries – India, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, and Bangladesh.
The internet restaurants, or cloud-kitchens, prepare food exclusively for delivery rather than serving dine-in or takeaway, thus making food serving operations more economical. This is something that is said to be crucial for food delivery firms, especially for developing markets like India.
The ten-year-old start-up, founded by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee, claims to steadily move towards profitability with annualized sales of $150 million, growing 100% year on year, spearheaded by the brick-and-mortar restaurants using cost-efficient cloud kitchens to scale.
Ravi Golani, Chief Strategy Officer, Rebel Foods said, “The food-tech space has evolved towards better personalization, innovation, and complete transparency which Rebel Foods continues to pioneer. We are excited to welcome QIA, which has a track record of being a long-term supportive investor. With this round of funding, we will continue to serve newer customer food missions powered by technology and automation.”
“While we are excited about becoming the next unicorn, our focus continues to remain on improving customer experience the Rebel way,” said Piyush Kakkad, Chief Financial Officer, Rebel Foods.
