Agritech Startup WayCool Acquires Bangalore-based Farm Taaza's Distribution Operations

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)

Bangalore Based Agri-tech Startup Farm Taaza Raises $8 Million

Bengaluru-based Farm Taaza, a fresh produce supply chain management firm, has recently raised a whopping Rs. 52 crore ($8 million) in a Series A funding round.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Gram Suchana Solutions Pvt Ltd., Farm Taaza is a B2B (Business to Business) entity focused on increasing the value to both the farmers and their business Customers(Retail/eCommerce/Hotels,Restaurants,Corporates,Institutions). The company is founded by Silicon Valley veterans and funded by Silicon Valley angel investors.

The funding round was led by Epsilon Venture Partners, a Hong Kong-based VC funding innovation and entrepreneurship across Asia and Tara India Fund IV, which is managed by IL&FS Investment Managers, among other existing investors of the 2015 founded firm.

Currently functioning in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ooty, Farma Taaza has plans of putting the capital raised to good use by expanding across South India. Some part of the money will also be utilised by the firm to make the required technological upgrades.

The Phaneesh Murthy-backed startup, which provides expert advice to the farmers on improving the yield and improving the field operations of the farmer, currently provides its services to over 1,400 farmers and supplies 150 varieties of fruits and vegetables to clients, including hotels and hospitals. Not only this, the company is also attentive about the cause of reducing wastage that comes from supplying fruits and vegetables to different destinations as much as possible.

Speaking in the light of the investment about Farm Taaza’s overall goal, Kumar Ramachandran, CEO of Farm Taaza, said, “We want to enable a seamless supply chain from farm to store and our next focus will be to leverage machine learning, AI and data analytics for improved decision making.”

Farm Taaza was founded by Kumar Ramachandran in August 2015. An alumnus of the University of South Florida, Ramachandran was earlier associated with companies such as Vignani Technologies, Applied Materials India and Hitachi Data Systems.

Commenting on his firm’s latest investment, Mahesh Vaidya, general partner, Epsilon Venture Partners, said, “The greatest potential comes from the digitisation of its supply chain — automation, data management, collaborative planning and forecasting, smart sourcing and product tracking, all of which make Farm Taaza more responsive, agile and transparent.”

[Image: VCCircle]