[Funding alert] D2C milk delivery startup Country Delight raises $108M in Series D round

Country Delight, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) milk and grocery delivery company, on Wednesday announced raising $108 million in a Series D funding round led by Nicholas Cator-backed Venturi Partners and Temasek. 

The round also saw participation from SWC Global and Trifecta Capital, besides returning investors IIFL Asset Management, Elevation Capital, Orios Venture Partners, and Matrix Partners. Avendus Capital acted as the financial advisor to Country Delight for the deal.

With the transaction, the Gurugram-headquartered startup has raised a total of $147 million in equity capital. In November 2020, it had raised $25 million in a Series C round.

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Founded in 2013 by Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal, Country Delight home-delivers essentials under its brand of dairy, fruits, vegetables, and bread within 24 to 36 hours of sourcing. 

“Country Delight is on a mission to disrupt the decades old Indian food essentials space. On the one hand, we have a highly unorganised sector, where quality is unreliable, and on the other hand, we have a highly organised sector, where the essence and naturalness of food is completely lost,” said Chakradhar Gade and Nitin Kaushal, Co-founders of Country Delight, in a statement. 

They added, “At Country Delight, we have taken a tech-driven and consumer-centric approach to solving this problem by delivering natural, fresh, and minimally processed food essentials, sourced directly from farmers present across India, and deliver to the doorstep of consumers every single day.”

The startup claims to make nearly eight million deliveries per month across 15 cities with a supply chain spread across 11 states. 

“The brand’s focus on offering farm-to-doorstep daily pantry essentials that are fresh and of highest quality has resulted in immensely positive customer feedback and strong loyalty. We have been very impressed by their product-first approach, vertically integrated business model, and ability to expand across categories,” said Rishika Chandan, Executive Managing Director at Venturi Partners, in the statement.

Country Delight operates in the scheduled milk and grocery delivery space, which has seen many acquisitions due to fraught unit economics.

In October 2021, its competitor Milkbasket was acquired by Reliance Retail. Similarly, food tech major Swiggy acquired SuprDaily in September 2018 only to shut down its operations in five cities in March 2022.