Indian direct-to-home food essentials brand Country Delight on Wednesday announced that it has raised $108 million in a Series D funding round led by Venturi Partners and Temasek, with participation from SWC Global and Trifecta Capital.
Existing investors IIFL Asset Management, Elevation Capital, Orios Venture Partners and Matrix Partners also participated in the round, the Gurugram-based startup said in a statement.
Country Delight had raised $25 million in a Series C round led by Elevation Capital in November 2020. The round saw participation from scheme(s) managed by IIFL AMC, and existing investors Matrix Partners India and Orios Venture Partners.
With the latest infusion, Country Delight’s total funding stands at $147 million, the statement added.
“On the one hand, we have a highly unorganised sector where quality is unreliable, and on the other hand, we have a highly organised sector where the essence and naturalness of food is completely lost. At Country Delight, we have taken a tech-driven and consumer-centric approach to solve this problem by delivering natural, fresh and minimally processed food essentials, sourced directly from farmers present across the country and delivered to the doorstep of consumers every single day,” Country Delight CEO and Co-founder Chakradhar Gade and COO and Co-founder Nitin Kaushal said.
Founded in 2013, Country Delight delivers fresh food essentials such as dairy, fruit and vegetables to the doorstep of consumers. Its business model promises fresh farm-to-home deliveries within 24-36 hours from sourcing. The company claims to have grown 10x in scale in the last three years alone, serving over 1.5 million customers across India.
The startup also claims to be doing 8 million deliveries per month across 15 cities with a supply chain that spans across 11 states.
India’s fresh food and staples market is expected to cross $50 billion by 2025. Currently, over 60% of the fresh food market is unorganised, with limited cold storage capabilities, a fragmented logistics chain and inadequate visibility of product quality across the supply chain, the company statement said.
“India has about 20 million affluent households across the top 50 cities that could benefit from Country Delight’s range of products, making this a huge opportunity that has remained largely commoditised thus far,” said Venturi Partners Executive Managing Director Rishika Chandan.
Other prominent deals in the fresh food space this year so far include meat and seafood brand Licious ($150 million), group buying platform for fresh fruit and vegetables Otipy ($32 million), B2B seafood and meat marketplace Captain Fresh ($50 million), fresh food startup Living Food ($7.5 million), fresh produce startup Pluckk ($5 million) and Pescafresh ($2 million), among others.
Avendus Capital acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Country Delight on this transaction.