Comments
FairPlum, a food company founded by former Unilever executives Rupesh Agarwal and Mitesh Thakkar and F&B specialist Mayank Tandon, has raised $2 million in a seed round led by Mumbai-based early-stage focused VC Unicorn India Ventures.
Angel investors Vivek Sirohi, VP-R&D, Unilever, Amith Agarwal, Co-Founder & CEO at Agri-Bazaar, Dinshaw Family Office, Anisha Subandh, have also participated in the round.
The funds raised will be utilised by the company for marketing & brand building, enhancing people skills, improvement of organisation facility and boosting the working capital
FairPlum was founded in 2020. The food company was founded with an aim to deliver “authentic flavours and food nostalgia to customer doorstep in less than an hour,” the company said.
“Fairplum is working with the regional/local authentic and heritage food brands of India and taking nostalgic dishes from their kitchen and making it available to consumers sitting anywhere by using food technology, food science and a supply chain network of cloud kitchens,” it said.
‘Phygital’ model
FairPlum products are deployed through a “phygital” model of cloud kitchens, e-commerce, experience centres and channel sales platform. The food company plans to have 100 cloud kitchen locations, one physical experience centre, five to ten kiosks within 2022, starting from Delhi-NCR and Mumbai. The company operates in 17 locations and has confirmed ten more cloud kitchen locations and one physical experience centre in Thane along with Bikanervala which is expected to go live in the next two months.
Rupesh Agrawal, Founder & CEO, FairPlum, said, “Fairplum wants to make foods/brands accessible by bringing authentic foods from across the world at great quality, and value. Our vision is to run a network of hundreds of cloud kitchens/physical experience centers on which we will ride our most authentic and iconic foods and their brands from all over the world.”
“The purpose is to deliver food products to consumers by preserving goodness in a healthy and hygienic manner. We will use the fresh funds to improve consumer experience with innovations in technology and upgrade the infrastructure with expanding the platform to other strategic territories,” added Agrawal.
Scalable opportunity
Anil Joshi, Managing Partner, Unicorn India Ventures, said, “FairPlum leverages technology to enhance efficiency and preserve the taste of the food which will be delivered in under an hour. Their ability to adopt the changing trend driven by technology has made the world closer to the consumer. Today, the consumer wants what they see and with immediate fulfilment. The food industry is undergoing a significant revolution especially with its creativity, innovation and cutting-edge technologies. We saw a strong pipeline of user base and business traction addressing food nostalgia which is why we decided to invest in them further.”
Nitesh Arora, President, Credence Family Office, said, the sole advisors to the deal, adds, “Today’s generation has very specific tastes and would highly appreciate the fact that their favourite food is made available at their doorstep. I believe this could be a very large and scalable opportunity for FairPlum.”
Kebabi Karvaan, Unmarried Kitchen
FairPlum has launched Kebabi Karvaan which is a sub brand of Food Karvaan that makes Iconic foods accessible and Unmarried Kitchen, a brand aimed at bachelors. It has also launched Street Food Karvaan, Rollz Karvaan and Crafted.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.