$121 million raises from FreshToHome – the founder claims he wants to double his profits to 1,500 crisis in a year.

• FreshToHome, the fresh fish and meat e-commerce platform, has raised $121 million in a Series C round.
• FreshToHome co-founder and CEO Shan Kadavil told Business Insider that the company is the world’s largest vertically integrated platform.
• Kadavil said that the company has grown over four times in the last 12 months, and specifically during the lockdown, they saw a 2.5X growth.

FreshToHome, the fresh fish and meat e-commerce platform, has raised $121 million in a Series C round. The funding was led by the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD) – the investment arm of the Dubai government, U.S. Government’s development finance institution – DFC, Investcorp, Allana Group, and others.

While the company said that this is the largest series C round of funding in consumer tech, FreshToHome co-founder and CEO Shan Kadavil told Business Insider that the company is the world’s largest vertically integrated platform.

“Given our value proposition, we have seen viral growth. In addition to that, we are not hyperlocal, we are not just a marketplace or a frontend for the end consumer. We have grown so fast because of the health, immunity, and safety aspect. If you go to a wet market today, it’s not really the safest thing to do,” Kadavil told Business Insider.

FreshToHome sources from over 1,500 fishermen and farmers from across the country and also does contract farming. The startup also uses its patent-pending AI-powered supply chain technology and is aided by a state-of-the-art cold chain.

“At ICD, we seek to partner with companies like FreshToHome that are able to break new ground for the greater good while also enjoying a large shareholder value creation opportunity,” said Khalifa Al Daboos, Deputy CEO of Investment Corporation of Dubai, in a statement.

With the latest investment, the company is also planning to expand across India and the Middle East.

Fast growth

Kadavil said that the company has grown over four times in the last 12 months, and specifically during the lockdown, they saw a 2.5X growth. “What that reflects is how consumer buying has changed. Our category is very huge, it’s a $94 billion market and despite the market size, mostly everything is sold through wet markets,” he said.

The biggest hesitation for people so far had been they didn’t know or had assurance about the quality of food bought online – whether it’s fresh or not. But Kadavil shared that by deleting the middlemen in the process, they offer fresh produce to their users. He shared an example that when a user from Delhi places an order at 11 am, the fish is still in Cochin and is processed overnight and delivered to the user.

“The online purchase behavior is such that once you try the first order, then you get hooked on to our page. We have over 96% retention which is really a measure of how consumers buyback from us. It’s one of the largest retention rates in the industry,” said Kadavil.

With the growing number of users and orders, over the next 12 months, Kadavil is targeting annualized sales of ₹1,500 crores.

Source: BusinessInsider