The Whole Truth Bags $11 Mn Funding From Sequoia Capital, Others

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) food brand The Whole Truth (TWT) has secured INR 90.2 Cr ($11 Mn) in a Series B funding round from existing investors Sequoia Capital and  Matrix Partners.

TWT allotted 1,02,879 Series B compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS) at an issuance price of INR 8,769 apiece to investors. Sequoia Capital infused INR 64.84 Cr while Matrix Partners invested INR 25.37 Cr in the fundraising round.

The development comes seventeen months after The Whole Truth (TWT) secured $6 Mn funding from Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Partners India, Sauce.vc, Flipkart’s Kalyan Krishnamurthy, Udaan’s Sujeet Kumar, and BharatPe’s Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani.

Set up in 2019 by former Unilever marketing executive Shashank Mehta, the Mumbai-based startup was initially named ‘And Nothing Else’ and later rebranded to ‘The Whole Truth’.

The startup sells healthy food snacks such as protein, energy and chocolate bars and milk chocolate, among others on its website and other ecommerce marketplaces.

It primarily uses a content outreach strategy to help consumers understand food choices and make conscious food preferences.

Including the current fundraising, the startup has raised a total of $18.5 Mn to date.

Earlier, it claimed to have a community base of more than 200K followers on social media platforms. It further asserted that it clocks 50% of sales from its own website and the remaining from ecommerce platforms. 

In India, it faces competition from the likes of healthy food brands such as Forbidden Foods, Myprotein, RiteBite, and Eat Any Time, among others.

In the financial year 2021, it reported an operating revenue of INR 4.8 Cr while its net loss stood at INR 3.8 Cr, according to Tofler data.  

As per an Inc42 report, the Indian D2C space is projected to become a $100 Bn market by 2025. Meanwhile, a Mordor Intelligence report shared that the country’s food and beverage market, which is a subsector of D2C space, is likely to cross the $156.25 Bn mark by 2026.

In the meantime, a slew of major developments has occurred in the D2C sector lately. For example, Keto-food startup Bajo Foods raised $2 Mn funding from Mount Judi Ventures, S Ramadorai and KPB Trust’s founder KP Balaraj.

Further, this month, Biryani by Kilo acquired a majority stake in dessert brand Get-A-Way and also infused $2 Mn in the food brand.

In November, D2C startup Yu Foodlabs secured $2.47 Mn in its Series A funding round led by ace investor Ashish Kacholia. Asian Paints Promoter Group’s Manish Choksi and Varun Vakil also participated in the funding round. 

The development was first reported by Entrackr