Big Band Food Tech (BBFT), the food brand aggregator, raised ?4.8 crores in seed funding led by Artha Venture Fund, India's first early-stage micro-VC fund. Angel investors such as Harsh Jain, Ashneer Grover, Chitra Radhakrishnan, Lakshmi Alagappan, Anand Kumar, and Nikhil Aggarwal also participated in the round. The Thrasio-style restaurant rollup startup will acquire more brands and expand its base with 90+ outlets. Besides, the 4-person founding team will deploy part of this round to upgrade its supply chain technology and grow the team. Big Bang Food Tech is AVF's 17th investment from its ?225 crores micro-VC fund.
BBFT acquired the legacy brand 34 Chowringhee Lane, which operates 37 outlets, with this funding round. The brand’s monthly orders have grown by 50% since December 2021. Based on the e-commerce rollup model, the ‘house of food brands’ will acquire 8 more legacy brands by FY 2022-23, with a targeted cumulative revenue of ?120 Cr generating 100+ direct and indirect jobs across the country.
BBFT will solve pressing domain challenges such as heavy cap investment and high fixed & set-up costs by setting up a shared supply chain and logistics at the backend and pooling resources to effectively operate all brands under its gamut. Moreover, the aggregator holds a more decisive influence to address real-estate pricing challenges due to economies of scale. They are armed with a founding team with 100+ years of cumulative experience in the F&B segment, scaled brands like Barista, Wendy's, and the Republic of Chicken. The fledgling startup has built a backend technology to drive the business via data analytics, develop a more robust product portfolio and iron out the supply chain challenges.
Abhimanyu Singh Rana, Co-founder, Big Bang Food Tech, said, "We are excited with our pace of growth and have observed massive whitespace in the F&B segment that we plan to conquer. As Urban Indian’s annual spend on outside food goes from < 100$ to China and Brasil’s >600$, there will be multiple breakout Indian brands. We are confident that we will catapult multiple Indian brands to the top 10 list in India. We are glad to have partnered with an investor like AVF that resonates with our vision, has an extensive F&B network, and has a nimble-footed approach. We look forward to achieving some record-breaking milestones with them!"
Manu Mohindra, Co-founder, Big Bang Food Tech, said, “We view our acquisitions from a different lens. We acquire legacy brands that haven't reached a national level but have a proven product-market fit as part of our approach. This approach enables the brands to bring down their customer acquisition cost and quickly scale up while counteracting high cash burn rates and customer stickiness.”
Anirudh A Damani, Managing Partner, Artha Venture Fund, said, "I believe that we have backed the four founders best suited to create a restaurant rollup giant. Manu, Sonia, Abhimanyu, and Sonia have unparalleled experience creating iconic restaurant brands by curating menus and simplifying their backends. The founders are food connoisseurs with a solid tech background bringing in a cumulative experience of over a century which is a rare combination for such a startup! My team and I look forward to creating waves in the Foodtech space, and we back this team to acquire brands of any size and make a big bang statement with it!”
BBFT leadership team comprises the who’s who of the F&B industry. While ISB grad Sonia Sinha is a two-time founder (Tupples and Sequoia-backed DoubtNut), Manu Mohindra, with his 30+ years of experience, can be credited for reimagining Wendy’s product offering for their entry into India, as well as redeveloping Barista post its last acquisition, enabling it to grow 50% since. Additionally, Sonia Mohindra had played an instrumental role in opening 50 outlets of the Republic of Chicken from scratch within 60 days, and IITD grad Abhimanyu built and scaled multiple award-winning F&B brands.
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