Hoi Foods raises US$ 2 million in Pre-Series A funding

Hoi Foods, cloud kitchen start-up, has raised US$ 2 million in its pre-Series A funding round. The fundraising was led by 1Crowd, an equity crowd funding platform, and other start-ups such as Sprout, Angelist, Samar Singla, founder of Jugnu, VCCircle chief executive officer (CEO) Jaideep Mehta, Mukund Kulashekaran of Urban Company, among others, also participated.

The firm plans to utilise these funds in order to strengthen the existing network of cloud kitchens and aims to catapult itself into the big league of the cloud kitchen ecosystem. It will also expand its cloud kitchen network across India, enhance its tech platform and strengthen supply chain.

The firm was founded by Mr Indrajeet Roy and Mr Pawan Raj Kumar. It has more than 150 cloud-kitchens serving 5,000+ meals in a day across the National Capital Region (NCR) and Bengaluru. The start-up plans to expand to Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

"We are building a very strong play in the cloud kitchens ecosystem and have been able to put together a decently large network in a very short duration. We feel honoured and excited to receive the confidence of all investors. I am also very confident and motivated to build our organisation much bigger and better with this," said Mr Kumar, co-founder, Hoi Foods.

In 2018, Hoi Foods had raised its seed funding and has grown seven times since then, according to a company statement.

Though, lockdown has impacted the business of cloud kitchens and Hoi is no different. "We had close to 150 kitchens pre-COVID but about 50 or so are operational today. Labour, logistics, lockdown, low demand are the reasons for closure of other outlets," added Mr Rajkumar.

It has also introduced other partner brands on its network such as Deez Biriyani, Ketofy, Nirula's, Misht, Smoodies and Cold Love apart from its flagship brands, Hoi Foods, Jacky Ching and Hoi Cafe. Hoi Foods also runs a dark shop model called Hoi Stores for hyperlocal delivery through aggregators.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.