Sequoia-Backed The Whole Truth Secures $15 Mn Funding

D2C food brand The Whole Truth (TWT) has secured about $15 Mn in Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. 

Existing investors Matrix Partners India and Sauce.vc and angel investors including Zerodha’s Nithin Kamath, Swiggy’s Sriharsha Majety and Rebel Foods’ Jaydeep Burman also participated in the funding round. 

TWT will use the fresh capital for scaling its manufacturing capacity, hiring talent, and expanding its retail distribution. 

The funding announcement comes almost two weeks after TWT reportedly secured $11 Mn funding from Sequoia Capital and  Matrix Partners. 

Founded in 2019 by ex-Unilever marketing executive Shashank Mehta, the D2C startup was earlier named ‘And Nothing Else’ but later got rebranded to ‘The Whole Truth’. It offers healthy food snacks such as protein bars, peanut butters and muesli, among others to consumers via its website and ecommerce platforms.

The startup shared that it has lately introduced date-sweetened chocolates, which do not include added sugar and is an in-house bean-to-bar chocolate factory. 

“With this new fundraise, hence, nothing changes. We’ll continue to innovate and enter more categories. We’ll continue to grow distribution and bring our existing products to more consumers. And we’ll continue to make clutter-breaking, myth-busting content that educates consumers. Because what we read and believe, is what we eat and repeat,” said Shashank Mehta, founder and CEO of The Whole Truth Foods.

The startup claims to manage an online community of more than 300K users and also, has grown 7X since its last fundraising, which was held in July 2021. It asserted that it has an offline presence in 10 Indian cities.

It said that it has eliminated sugars, artificial flavors, and harmful preservatives from its healthy snack food.

“Building large, enduring brands takes decades. And the fact that all our existing investors, even in the current environment have chosen to back us once again – is all the validation we need to know we’re on the right track,” Shashank added. 

In India, it faces competition from D2C food brands including Forbidden Foods, Myprotein, RiteBite, and Eat Any Time, among others.

In FY2021, it posted an operating revenue of INR 4.8 Cr and a net loss of INR 3.8 Cr, according to Tofler data.  

As per an Inc42 report, the country’s D2C space is anticipated to become a $100 Bn market by 2025. 

On the other hand, a Mordor Intelligence report shared that the country’s F&B market is anticipated to surpass the $156.25 Bn mark by 2026.