[Funding Alert] FreshToHome raises $11M in Series A led by CE Ventures

Bengaluru-based meat delivery startup FreshToHome has raised $11 million Series A funding led by CE Ventures. The round also saw participation from Das Capital, Kortschak Investments, TTCER Partners, Al-Nasser Holdings, M&S Partners, and other Asia and Valley-based investors. Tarun Khandelwal of Add Advisory Partners of UAE was the advisor to the company on the round.

According to the press statement shared by the company, the funding will be used to strengthen the startup's sourcing supply chain by extending its patent pending sourcing technology to fishermen and farmers across India.

The team is also looking to expand into new geographies like Mumbai and Pune and also deepen its operations across existing cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Chennai, and Kerala. CE Ventures invests across technology domains, including supply chain technology, medtech, fintech, and other niche consumer-focused and enterprise SaaS technologies.

It has invested in the likes of Uber, Pinterest, and more recently EdCast, a Silicon Valley-based company known for its pioneering AI-powered Knowledge Cloud solution; UAE based global smart kitchen network, Kitopi, that cooks and delivers on behalf of restaurants; and India-based online furniture subscription platform, Furlenco.

Also read: How Licious is grabbing a big bite of the $30B Indian meat market

Speaking of the funding, Shan Kadavil, Founder and CEO, FreshToHome, said in a press statement, “We are disrupting the food supply chain in India with our patent pending commodities exchange technology offering food that is free of added chemicals to end consumers and a fair price to the producers. Most of our capital has gone into re-inventing the food supply chain. We currently sell meat and fish sourced from over 1,500 fishermen and farmers on our platform, using our state-of-the-art technology backed with cold chain infrastructure, a fleet of dedicated refrigerated trucks, using the hub and spoke distribution model from four large processing factories to ensure traceability and food safety.”

India consumes meat worth around $30 billion every year, and the demand is only expected to grow faster driven by economic growth, rising per capita income, urban trends, and a rise in the awareness of the nutrition provided by meat and related products. However, 90 percent of this demand has been primarily addressed by the unorganised market.

Also read: From door-to-door salesman to CEO, here's the story of Zappfresh's Deepanshu Manchanda

Shan believes India’s perishable food supply chain is riddled with middle men, leading to quality issues by the end consumers due to additives such as preservatives and chemicals, while exploiting the farmers and fishermen of fair price.

The team claims to have over 400,000 customers across four cities, connecting with 1,500 local fishermen across 125 coasts in India with a business turnover of over Rs 12 crore GMV per month on its marketplace.

Speaking on the investment, Tushar Singhvi, Director, CE Ventures, said in a press release,

“The Meat and Seafood segment in India is pegged to be a $30 billion market, but we have to keep in mind that it’s a highly fragmented industry. FreshToHome.com is not only trying to streamline the industry, they’re also using technology to revolutionise the way the industry functions by disintermediating the supply chain, eliminating the middleman, and working directly with the fishermen and farmers in a market place model to make fresh and chemical free food accessible to the masses at large. It is a very robust model and a sustainable mission, and we are extremely proud to back Shan and his team on this journey.”

The fresh meat industry in India is worth Rs 180,000 crore with butcher shops (i.e. the unorganised sector) comprising 90 percent. The Indian seafood industry is also considered one of the biggest globally, exporting a wide range of products. From India, seafood products are shipped to more than 100 countries.

Also read: The journey of the pomfret, from the coast to the frying pan – FreshtoHome style