Foodtech Startup Twigly Raises $600K Seed Funding

Foodtech startup Twigly has raised $600K seed funding. Tracxn Labs, Hyderabad Angels, Kunal Shah (co-founder, FreeCharge), Aditya Verma (co-founder, Makaan.com), Gaurav Bhalotia (Vice-president of Engineering, Flipkart), partners at McKinsey and other angels participated in this funding round of Twigly.

Gurgaon-based Twigly was founded in August 2015 by Sonal Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi. It is operational in the Delhi-NCR. Twigly aspires to form a chain of brands across cuisines and formats.

The startup will use the funds for top of the funnel marketing, expansion to Delhi and Bangalore.

Co-founder Rohan Dayal, said, “We’re building an iconic brand that people love associating themselves with. We’ve already gotten requests to open across India (Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad) as the word spreads, and we’re working day-and-night to grow Twigly without compromising on our core values of quality and customer-focus.”

The Idea

Twigly is modelled on Sprig, a San-Francisco-based company which also focuses on providing affordable organic food. By delivering on-demand and quality fresh food, Twigly wishes to replicate Sprig’s success in India.

Twigly is building a modern-day food supply chain, anchored around freshness, instead of frozen foods with a long shelf life (as used extensively by MNC food chains like Subway, McDonalds, KFC).

Most of the Quick service restaurant (QSR) chains in India are scaling a business model that is dated 30-40 years ago in the US. These formats are already getting challenged by chains such as Shake Shack, Sprig, Chipotle in the US. Twigly’s focus on freshness and technology ensures good customer experience through quality food, timeliness in delivery, and a simple ordering process.

Twigly’s recipes and menu, offer a selection of sandwiches, rice-curries, pastas, salads, shakes and smoothies.

The Road Ahead

Twigly is aiming to scale to $100 Mn in sales in the next 7-8 years. For its customers, Twigly is creating personalised user experiences based on its customers eating habits and choices. Examples include ‘Slick’ – Single click ordering of Twigly’s sandwich of the day, and one-click online payment through Twigly’s apps, available for iOS and Android devices.

Twigly helps consumers by customising its menu based on eating habit. In just 7 months, Twigly has created a user-base of 6,000 customers. Twigly is also working on a line of higher shelf-life products for modern retail and FMCG.

Prior to this in November 2015, Twigly raised $200K in its angel round. Earlier in June 2016, app-based food delivery aggregator KhanaGaDi raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Hyderabad-based 50K Ventures. Other startups in this segment include EasyKhana, InnerChef, Faasos etc.

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