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Fish and meat distribution start-up, FreshR, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding round led by B Axilor Ventures and 1crowd.
The start-up said it will use the fresh funding to expand its geographical footprint, develop & implement its tech stack, as well as grow its team.
Founded by Ambika Satapathy & Sadananda Satapathy in 2016, FreshR had earlier raised a pre-seed round from Villgro, Upaya Social Ventures, Beyond Capital Fund, and other early stage funders. Since its inception, FreshR has farmed, traded, processed and distributed highly perishable meat products in some of the most remote geographies in Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
The start-up claims it will touch about $50 million ARR by the end of FY23 and become EBIDTA positive.
Ambika Satapathy, Co-founder, FreshR said, “The Indian meat industry, of which general trade and HORECA make up the largest segments, suffers from fragmented demand, high perishability and under-invested, opaque supply chains. This leads to poor product quality and massive wastage. Our vision is to organise the domestic market by using technology to cater to this fragmented demand and investing in world class infrastructure to manage pan-India sourcing & distribution.”
The start-up said it uses a combination of operational efficiency and technology integration to aggregate an extremely fragmented national demand base and ensure quality, variety and secure high-value transactions for its customers.
Digital footprint
Prachi Sinha, the deal lead at Axilor, added, “FreshR’s full-stack model and digital footprint are key to increase their relevance to their buyers and distributors. FreshR has been able to achieve higher than industry growth while maintaining healthy contribution margins.”
The company also launched an application earlier this year which is a one of a kind resource used to standardise prices and grades for the sector and allows bulk buyers from across India to place orders & track quality processes.
“Ambika and Sadanand are quintessential entrepreneurs who have built a strong business that targets the meat and fisheries supply chain industry bringing high quality standards, transparency and financial access to the various stakeholders in the value chain. Their tech lead model helps integrate a highly fragmented industry bringing in significant efficiencies in creating time and place utility to highly perishable products. We look forward to working with them as they enter a very exciting phase of growth,” said Natasha Kothari, Partner at 1Crowd.
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