D2C Food Brand Slurrp Farm Raises $2 Mn In Series A Funding From Fireside

Gurugram-based D2C health food brand for children Slurrp Farm has raised $2 Mn in a Series A round from consumer-focused investor Fireside Ventures. 

Fireside‘s founder and managing partner Kanwaljit Singh has joined Slurrp as a board member.

Slurrp Farm has said that the funds would be used for product innovation, marketing and increasing inventory to cater to the growing demand. More plans for growing the team and solidifying the company’s direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel are also in the works. 

In the health food space, Slurrp Farm competes with The Whole Truth and Soullful, among several other D2C startups. In India, native D2C plays have to be backed by a presence in third-party marketplaces such as Amazon and Flipkart, as well as a presence in brick-and-mortar retail stores, to reach all segments of consumers, so brands have multiple fronts to seek growth and revenue. 

Besides online retailers, Slurrp Farm’s products are being sold in nearly 600 retail stores and leading online grocery shopping portals across India, UAE, and Singapore.

Slurrp Farm was started four years back, after the company’s cofounders, both mothers, realised the dearth of high-quality packaged food in the market for their children. The company currently retails 25 products, which includes porridges and cereals, puffed snacks for children, millet pancakes, millet dosa, and cake mixes.

Slurrp Farm has said that since it’s a food company, it was allowed to continue production amid the countrywide lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, starting late-March this year. And while the company claims to have registered a 3x growth from February 2020 to date — selling 1 Lakh units to 40,000 customers a month — the pandemic brought its own challenges relating to logistics. 

“Our key challenge is not dissimilar to all companies large and small – logistics are uncertain, and there are several disruptions at this moment. Offline retail is largely closed off to SME companies and has reverted mostly to the larger companies,” Malik of Slurrp Farm had told Inc42 in April this year, days after the lockdown had been placed across the country. 

Slurrp Farm had raised $1 Mn in a pre-Series A round in June 2018 from several angel investors such as Sanjeev Bhikchandani of Info Edge, Ashish Dhawan of Central Square Foundation and Aditya Ghosh, Board Member, FabIndia and Oyo.