Essar-backed Pluckk to be significant player in food segment in 5 years

With Pluckk, the Essar group has made its foray into the food and beverage segment, the brand growing rapidly to become a significant player in the category in the next five years.

Pluckk, funded by Exponentia Ventures and backed by Essar Capital, sells a a range of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole or packed, as well as processed foods such as juices, salads, dips, ready-to-eat foods, and meal kits.

Launched just two years back, the brand has already doubled its revenues and selling 1.8 million packets a month with a customer base of 5 lakh, Chief Financial Officer Nelson D’Souza told businessline. It ended FY24 with annual recurring revenue (ARR) at ₹100 crore and is expected to grow three times in FY25.

“We have doubled revenue in the last 12 months, I think that trend is going to continue,” D’Souza said. He added that it was operationally profitable and was looking to be EBITDA positive in the next 12 months.

Launched as a digital-only brand it has tie-ups with all major e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Zomato, Swiggy and bigbasket, while it has its own app on which considerable investments are being made. It also has limited presence in physical stores such as in Spencer’s and Nature’s Basket.

Currently it delivers in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi and plans to expand to five cities this year, 10 cities next year and in 15 cities in two years. Each of the major cities now has processing centres or fulfilment centres.

The aim is to build a national level distribution network or supply chain that can be leveraged as it expands pan-India.

Fund raising plans

The company had initially raised $5 million and more would be raised as it expands. “We would look at it going forward because the expansion would need a good amount of capex,” D’Souza said. “We would look at raising funds from the market at the appropriate time.”

The value-added food segment is the one that is expected to grow fast. This includes juices, dips, salads, and do-it-yourself meal kits. This constitutes around half of the total portfolio and the number of products is around 500 — up from 300 last year.

Juices, for instance, were launched only last month and were already doing sales at ₹6 crore ARR.

D’Souza said that over the last couple of the years the company had been building up and setting up the necessary infrastructure and now it had to scale that up. “So next five years, I think we should, we should be a significant player in this in this space.”

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