iD Fresh Food (India) Pvt Ltd, a leading ready-to-cook packaged food company, has raised Rs 35 crore from venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners.

iD is known for the idly and dosa batter that it sells through retail outlets in the South and the West. This is the first round of institutional funding raised by the company. It will use the money to introduce new product categories, expand its market and strengthen the team.

Rahul Chowdhri, Partner, Helion, will join the company’s board.

Spark Capital Advisors helped iD in its fund raise.

iD was founded in 2005 by IIM-Bangalore alumnus PC Musthafa and his associates, Shamsudeen TK, Abdul Nazer, Jafar TK and Noushad TD.

iD started with packaging idly and dosa batter and has since diversified into Malabar parotas, wheat parotas, chappatis and chutneys. It has production units in six cities – two plants in Bengaluru, one each in Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Mangaluru and Dubai. iD products are also supplied to distribution centres in Mysore and Pune. It sells over 23,000 kg of batter a day.

iD plans to expand to 30 cities in five years and aims at doubling the outlet reach from 6,000 in eight cities now, within the next few months. “iD sells Rs 7 crore worth of preservative-free food products each month in eight cities and with this round of funding, we are poised to see the next level of growth,” Musthafa PC, CEO, iD Fresh Food, was quoted in a press release.

According to Spark Capital, it was the exclusive financial advisor to iD and assisted the company right from ideation till the deal was closed. It helped the company in preparing its business plan, marketing the opportunity to multiple investors and managing the entire diligence and documentation process. The transaction was also structured to be completely Sharia compliant, one of the first of its kind in a transaction of this nature, according to Spark.

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