Foodtech Startup HungerBox Raises $2.5 Mn Funding From Lionrock Capital And Kris Gopalakrishnan

Growth Story-promoted B2B foodtech company, HungerBox has begun the new year on a favourable note by closing a Pre-Series A funding of worth $2.5 Mn led by Lionrock Capital and Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys.

Sandipan Mitra, CEO and Co-Founder HungerBox said, “HungerBox’s business has scaled tremendously over the last 15 months with nearly 7 Mn orders placed on our platform till date. We are clocking more than 120,000 daily orders and expect to scale this to half a million orders per day by end-2018. The funding we have received from marquee investors will boost our ability to scale our operations to keep pace with the traction we are seeing for our digital cafeteria management solution.”

HungerBox was started by Sandipan Mitra and Uttam Kumar and is promoted by GrowthStory, the venture-builder platform founded by serial entrepreneurs, K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh. The founders are veterans of the foodtech space in India whose previous stints include global food takeaway ordering service Just Eat’s India operations.

The Bengaluru-based venture was started in 2016 as a full stack, foodtech company making use of the latest IoT that is focussed on the B2B space. It operates in more than 100 digital cafeterias for more than 75 corporate clients including Qualcomm, Microsoft, FirstSource, Accenture, CapGemini, Genpact, ABB, Amazon and McKinsey across Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Delhi/NCR and Jaipur.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys commented, “There is tremendous potential for innovation in the B2B food-tech arena as corporate spends on F&B are already massive and growing year-on-year. HungerBox addresses this large space with an easily scalable model and an end-to-end solution that provides a win-win to employees as well as to corporate clients.”

The startup caters through a customised mobile app with more than 50 different payment methods which is made available to each employee in the client organisation, connecting them to the food vendors through the tech-led seamless solution. Using the app, employees can view the menu provided by all enlisted food vendors at their workplace cafeterias, place orders and track their deliveries accurately along with the feature to provide feedback on the food they receive.

Other features which make the app preferable to the employees, and not just in terms of food ordering include: ‘Personalised Recommendations’ to employees through its AI-driven technology, ‘Health Mode’ for health-conscious employees, ability to undertake group-ordering and orders from restaurants in the vicinity when corporate café’s are closed etc.

As per the company, the B2B space in the F&B industry is currently a viable business object with a spending which is estimated to reach $14 Bn in India in 2018. Space is growing at almost 15% per annum.

Through this funding round, HungerBox will aim to scale up operations in the uber-competitive foodtech space.