Chennai-based WayCool Foods & Products Pvt. Ltd. has engaged into a business transfer agreement with Farm Taaza, a Bengaluru based fresh produce e-commerce enterprise that works with online and offline retailers and other clients and backed by Hong Kong-based Epsilon Venture Partners and former iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy.

The agreement will enable WayCool integrate Farm Taaza’s collection & distribution centres, as well as the base of customers across Southern India onto its supply chain platform, increasing its capacity by an additional 40-45 tons per day.

Commenting on this strategic move, Sanjay Dasari, Co-Founder, WayCool Foods said, “We are delighted to bring on board the distribution business of Farm Taaza, one of the first movers and pioneers in the agritech space. We have begun the task of getting the tech and ops teams together, and integrating Farm Taaza’s centres seamlessly into our IT platform. With this, we will be able to increase our procurement base as well as our distribution footprint in specific target markets such as Telangana and Karnataka.”

This move enables Waycool to add another building block in its strategy of building out a full stack food supply chain. Earlier this year, WayCool had acquired the distribution business of Aalgro Foods, and had taken significant equity stake in M/s Benani Foods Pvt. Ltd., the promoters of Freshey’s ready-to-cook products.

WayCool currently serves a network of around 8,000 clients with 200 tons of food products every day from a base of 35,000 farmers.

Kumar Ramachandran, Founder, Farm Taaza, said, “While we have had good success in building a supply chain business in the fresh produce industry, we felt that our core skills lay more in the Tech Space as an enabler for change. We have known WayCool for quite some time and given the robust supply chain they’ve built this far, we felt they would be the best partners to hand over our operations to while we pursue our new initiatives.”
About WayCool Foods Pvt. Ltd.

In July 2017, Farm Taaza had raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Epsilon Venture Partners and Tara India Fund IV, which was managed by IL&FS Investment Managers Ltd.

Farm Taaza had also received $1 million in its seed round from angel investors such as former iGate CEO Phaneesh Murthy and former Asia-Pacific chief of Intel Capital Sudheer Kuppam.

WayCool Foods, founded in July 2015 by Sanjay Dasari and Karthik Jayaraman, is India’s fastest growing food development & distribution platform leveraging innovative technology to scale-up and operate a complex supply chain. The company operates a full-stack, broadline product range across multiple channels and categories like fresh produce, staples and dairy serving over 8,000 clients in the general trade, modern trade, and food services space.

In January this year, WayCool raised Rs 120 Crore , as a combination of equity and debt from LGT Impact, prominent angels, and institutional lenders, including Northern Arc Capital and Caspian.

~ Via Business Wire India feed (edited)
Advertisements

Post a Comment

Previous Post Next Post
Like this content? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get latest updates.