[Funding Alert] FreshToHome raises $20M in Series B round led by Iron Pillar

Online meat startup FreshToHome has raised $20 million Series B finding led by Iron Pillar, with key participation from Joe Hirao, the Founder of ZIGExN, Japan. Existing investors including CE Ventures, Massar International, Al Nassar Holdings, TTCER Partners, and Sin Growth Partners participated in the round.

With this current funding the team will be looking to expand into other cities in India and the UAE. The startup will also use the funds to diversify its product offerings into other fresh and chemical-free food categories like fruits and vegetables, organic cow and buffalo milk, cold pressed oils, organic staples, dairy products, and other food products.

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In May this year the team had raised $11 million Series A funding led by CE Ventures.

Speaking of the funding, Shan Kadavil, Co-founder and CEO of FreshToHome said in a press release, 

“We are just getting started and with a $250 billion market size in front of us in the perishables category alone in India - this is just the tip of the iceberg. We recently crossed 14,000 orders a day - this reinforces our belief that if you give consumers safe to eat food at an honest price, you can create a brand loved by thousands thanks to our loyal customers, fishermen, and farmers who trade or farm directly on our platform."

The team currently claims to have over 650,000 customers across 10 cities, with over 1,500 local fishermen, around 125 coasts in India. The team adds that a total of 20 tonnes of fish and meat are sold per day. FreshToHome also claims to be seeing a 30 percent month-on-month growth. It has expanded to Mumbai and Pune, and the UAE.

Speaking of the funding, Anand Prasanna, Managing Partner of Iron Pillar, said,

“This is our first investment in the foodtech space and we wanted to be certain of the value offered by the brand and strong technology enabled moats for the business. FreshToHome’s brand proposition has been to provide 100 percent fresh food with zero chemicals, not an easy thing to achieve in India at a large scale."

He added that FreshToHome has created the largest and fastest perishable supply chain for fish and meat in India to make this happen.

"By smartly using big data and machine learning, they have created a sustainable supply chain, which offers a fair price to consumers, fishermen and farmers, for their premium produce. This patent pending, direct sourcing Commodities Exchange Platform is a game changer in the industry and is very hard to replicate. We love companies that solve such hard issues in large market segments in India through unique tech enabled moats," said Anand.

The team also recently launched their offline stores across Bengaluru and Chennai. 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.

The fresh meat industry in India is worth Rs 180,000 crore with butcher shops (ie 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.

(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)

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