Cloud Kitchens Startup Box8 Raises $15 Mn from eWTP Ecosystem Fund, Others

Box8, one of India’s largest cloud kitchen startups has raised $15 million led by eWTP Ecosystem Fund. Existing investors Mayfield and IIFL Seed Ventures fund have also participated in this round.

Started by two IIT graduates Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta, Box8 is a technology first, full stack cloud kitchen company that is known for its All-in-1 meals, Desi Boxes & more. They own the entire value chain, from procurement of high-quality ingredients to food preparation to the last mile delivery, hence ensuring superior customer experience every time.

Box8 has a presence in 4 cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and NCR delivering over 1 million meals every month from the company-owned 110+ cloud kitchens. Its network of cloud kitchens negates the high rental & operations costs incurred by traditional restaurants and has workflows better suited for delivery.

Box8’s parent company, Poncho Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. also owns and operates the pizza delivery brand- MOJO Pizza. In less than 18 months since its inception, MOJO Pizza has grown to be the largest home-grown Pizza delivery chain delivering over 3 lakh pizzas a month. It leverages the existing delivery fleet, technology platform and the network of 110+ cloud kitchens across 4 cities.

eWTP Ecosystem Fund is headed by Mr. Youngfu Yu, a founding member of the popular Chinese web browser company UCWeb. He later became a key leader in the Alibaba ecosystem: heading multiple businesses, including Autonavi, Alimama, and Alibaba Entertainment Group.

“We are solving the biggest unsolved problem in food delivery, which is the preparation of food itself. Traditional restaurants simply have a different DNA: their food is all about experience and is meant to be eaten immediately. We are a delivery first company, designing our food keeping in mind that it will be in transit for another 10-15 minutes. Our in-house fleet delivers 100% of our orders, this gives us even greater control over the food quality,” says co-founder, Amit Raj.

“Restaurants are still lagging in technology adoption. Even the biggest brands run on archaic systems with human dependent inventions. We have built our proprietary technology platform grounds up, which forms the backbone of our seamless operations. After all, we are solving two big problems: on-demand preparation of high-quality food and delivering it piping hot within 25 mins. To keep doing this at scale, we would double down on tech,” says co-founder, Anshul Gupta.

With this additional funding, they plan to rapidly scale the business geographically to 5 more cities with 100 more kitchens in the next 12 months. They are planning to aggressively acquire talent & invest deeper in technology.

[Published unedited via BusinessWire India feed]

Food Tech Startup Box8 Raises $7.5M in Series B Round Led by IIFL Seed Ventures Fund

Mumbai-based food technology startup Box8 has raised Rs. 50 crore ($7.5 million) in a Series B funding round led by IIFL Seed Ventures Fund, a unit of IIFL Holdings Ltd, and existing investor Mayfield Fund. “With this round, we intend to go deeper into the cities where we are present and start operations in Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad in the next 12 months. Apart from geographical expansion, we want to invest in technology. We want to drive more automation and personalization,” said Box8 co-founder Anshul Gupta.

The company currently operates three central kitchens, one in each city, and 50 delivery centres.

Founded in 2012 by Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta (both IIT alumni), Box8 (previously Poncho) is a full-stack service provider that handles everything from procurement of raw materials and preparation of the food to delivery. In January 2014, the company changed its menu to Indian food and rebranded itself Box8.

The company had raised Rs 21 crore in Series-A round of funding, from US-based venture capital firm Mayfield in 2015. Also the firm is backed by a clutch angel investors including Mu Sigma Inc. founder and chief executive Dhiraj Rajaram and Kaushal Aggarwal, co-founder and managing director at Avendus Capital and Indian Angel Network.

The other food tech startups that have shut down previously or some have been acquired by well-capitalized rivals include Spoonjoy (acquired by hyperlocal delivery start-up Grofers) in October last year; another start-up, Dazo, shut shop in the same month; Eatlo Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd closed down in December; and Tinyowl merged with hyperlocal delivery start-up Roadrunnr in June this year.

Even Zomato, the most funded home-grown food tech startup, with about $224 million funding its umbrella, had fired around 10% of its workforce last year.