Mumbai-based on-demand food delivery startup Box8 has raised about $7.5 Mn (INR 50 Cr) Series B funding from IIFL Seed Ventures Fund and Mayfield Ventures.
The funds will be used towards strengthening the supply chain, building superior technology, enhancing product development and expanding into new geographies.
Talking about expansion plans, co-founder Amit Raj said, “Our strategy of establishing ourselves in certain key markets, instead of spreading wide and thin has helped us scale fast and develop a loyal customer base in a capital efficient manner. With the growing working class and their changing lifestyle preferences, there is immense potential to be tapped. This new influx of capital will allow us to capitalise on the opportunity by expanding to three to four more cities using the same micro intensive approach.”
Box8 was founded in 2012 by two IIT graduates Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta. It is a full stack online food delivery player with a menu consisting of over 100 dishes – ranging from Indian meals, biryanis, to wraps, sandwiches, and salads. According to a company statement, Box8 now serves 12,000 meals every day through a network of 60 stores across three cities Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru.
It currently manages an operational team of 1,200 plus to operate its full stack approach model.
Talking about the operational efficiencies, co-founder Anshul Gupta said, “Real-time decision making is the key in any operationally intensive business. With an integrated platform that cuts across customers, delivery units, kitchen & vendors, we have a live single window that speeds up decision making not just for our ground crew but also for our central teams. Two key areas we are focussing on going forward are automation and prediction. While technology and data, has helped us identify challenges, automation will help address them and prediction will help us understand consumer preferences better.”
Prior to this in May 2015, Box8 raised $3.5 Mn Series A funding from Silicon Valley-based early-stage venture capital firm Mayfield. In September this year, online food delivery startup Swiggy raised $15 Mn (INR 100 Cr) led by US-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners in Series D round of funding.
One of the investors in funding this round is IIFL Seed Ventures Fund, which is the venture capital & private equity arm of IIFL Wealth & Asset Management. The venture arm raised a sector-agnostic fund last year to invest in both early and growth stage companies and Box8 becomes the first food business for them to invest in.
According to a Morgan Stanley report, the current online food aggregator business should expect a 134% Y-o-Y growth reaching about $4.4 Bn by 2020. Other players in this segment include Zomato, Runnr, Shadowfax, and Foodpanda India etc.
