1Crowd Invests Undisclosed Sum In Cold Chain Logistics Startup Tessol

Mumbai-based cold chain logistics startup Tessol has raised an undisclosed amount in a follow-on equity funding round led by early-stage venture capital platform 1Crowd.

Existing investors Infuse Ventures and Ankur Capital also participated in the latest funding round.

Tessol was founded in 2013 by IIT Delhi-Harvard Alumnus Rajat Gupta. The startup aims to revolutionise the cold chain distribution space in India using technology-based energy storage solutions.

Tessol, which has developed solutions ranging from farm-level collection to home delivery, works with the largest FMCG, food processing, and ecommerce players in India.

The startup will use the raised funds to strengthen its current product suite and bring some disruptive products that were under development to pilot and commercialisation.

Anil Gudibande, co-founder, 1Crowd, believes that Tessol occupies a sweet spot at the intersection of India’s underserved cold chain architecture and a vacuum in environmentally-friendly clean energy solutions.

“Tessol’s farm-to-fork product range serves myriad use cases, application segments, and customer profiles, and the breadth and depth of its client roster bears ample testimony to the efficacy of their innovation-driven offerings,” he added.

Tessol: Filling Gaps In The Indian Food Industry

Rajat Gupta believes that there are huge gaps in the Indian food supply chain and that while there are several cold chain products available in the market, there is a dearth of viable solutions.

Tessol’s cold storage and transportation solutions eliminate the use of fossil fuel for cold chain transport systems. It’s PLUGnCHILL range of products for transport refrigeration use the proprietary PCM heat exchanger technology to provide 60% cost savings while eliminating the use of any fuel.

Tessol products are marketed across India and are being launched in the UAE to tap the middle-eastern market.

It has already customised 200 cold chain vehicles with modular TES units for bakeries, fruit, and vegetable vendors, dairy and ice cream manufacturers, and e-commerce, food processing, poultry and seafood companies, as claimed by the founder.

“At TESSOL, we believe in partnering with our customers and working out system-level solutions that can drastically impact costs while improving the performance. We further plan to expand our sales and service network across India and create more products,” he added.

Other emerging startups in the Indian agritech and food space are Ninjacart, Waycool, FarmLink, AgroStar, and Gramco Infratech, among others.