|
|
|
You can get e-magazine links on WhatsApp. Click here
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kitchens Centre to scale up operations and expand into newer markets
|
|
Friday, 20 November, 2020, 13 : 00 PM [IST]
|
|
Our Bureau, Bengaluru
|
Delhi-based Shared Kitchen start-up Kitchens Centre, has raised an undisclosed Pre Series A from US-based Village Global. The company raised a seed round of $500,000 in April this year from AngelList India.
Village Global is an early-stage venture capital firm backed by the world's most successful entrepreneurs, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Disney’s Bob Iger and more.
Founded in 2019 by Lakshay Jain, the company is a Shared kitchen start-up that provides infrastructure and technology solutions and more, for Online Food and FMCG brands. With the approach of building ready to move-in-kitchens, the company offers key benefits for brand partners with the fully fitted kitchen making it easier for brands to launch operations and/or penetrate the market faster.
Lakshay Jain, founder, Kitchens Centre, said, “Kitchens Centres is providing a dedicated and sustainable solution for businesses to grow and produce a high order volume and sales. With the obvious benefit being the reduction of cost, we also aim to create an incubated ecosystem with integrated tech solutions, supply chain, logistics support and platform aggregation. Moreover with the pandemic still very much prevalent, the food delivery business is prospering and gaining momentum in the food services industry.”
Kitchens Centre started operations with two locations in Delhi and over the course of 1 year have scaled up to 35 plus locations across 15 cities pan India. The company has a network of 200 plus kitchen units presently and works with over 50 food and beverage brands like Choko La, Mamagoto, Biryani Blues, Sleepy Owl, Cross Border Kitchen, Masala story - Punjabi by nature, Fat Lulu’s, Nirula’s, Maalgaadi by Dhaba Estd 1986 and more. Furthermore, the company is planning to expand further by adding more than 90 plus new locations and 550 units over the next one year. Currently, the start-up is managing 100,000 sq.ft space with 50 plus team members. This number is bound to grow rapidly as they are actively recruiting team members across the board.
Erik Torenberg, co-founder, Village Global, said, “Kitchens Centre data-driven approach to property acquisition and sales management ensures maximisation of occupancy and unit economics. They consider various idiosyncratic factors such as cuisine share/gap, composition of user cohorts and associated AOV etc., to target a specific location within a city. India is one of the largest and fastest growing food and beverage consumption markets and Kitchens Centre is rightly placed to address a market gap. It is enabling restaurants, food entrepreneurs as well as FMCG brands to take advantage of the boom in delivery/ logistics and achieve higher ROI - minimal capital outlay and faster go-to-market. We see significant investment opportunities in this ecosystem.”
As food delivery is expected to outpace dining and at-restaurant sales in the next 9-12 months, the company is aspiring to partner with many more restaurants and food-tech start-ups to accelerate their growth story.
This concept is finding a lot of traction in the global markets as well - more recently, Virtual Kitchen Co. (USA), Karma Kitchen (UK) and Zuul (USA) have raised significant growth capital.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|