“Our Food,” an Agritech startup, has raised $6 million (around Rs 45 crore) in a funding round led by existing investor 3Lines Venture Capital and a new investor, C4D Asia Fund. The company will use the funds to upgrade its operations, increase manufacturing capacity and improve India’s agricultural food supply chain, which sees about $5 billion in post-harvest wastage every year. As part of the investment, Lalit Jalan, India’s chairman of 3Lines, will join the company’s board of directors.
Bala Reddy, the founder and CEO of Our Food, said the majority of the value gained from pre-processing, reducing post-harvest wastage and supply chain disintermediation is shared between the franchise operator and the farmer that supplies the unprocessed harvest.
Reddy said that bringing food processing closer to the farm is the mission the Our Food team has worked on tirelessly over the past five years and has fine-tuned the business model to develop innovative ideas in manufacturing, food processing operations, financing, and B2B/B2C sales.
He added that this capital infusion will help us boost our capacity to over 6,000 operational franchises, give us the right ammunition to significantly disrupt the food processing industry and position us for an IPO in 2024.
The Hyderabad-based company has a presence in 13 states in India, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Karnataka. It has processing units for more than 15 crops, including pulses, cereals, spices, and groundnuts, and plans to expand its crop portfolio. Over 1,700 rural entrepreneurs have licenced Our Food Farmer franchises, each operating a regional crop-specific processing unit that procures and processes raw materials from over a hundred farmers from nearby villages.
Each farmer franchisee is powered by an end-to-end tech-enabled solution, starting with the establishment of a single mini food processing unit, access to equipment financing, training in processing, and marketing of the processed output. “Our Food value proposition is a triple play for the rural youth who operate franchises, for farmers who can increase their income through direct supply, and for business buyers who can offer higher quality to their consumers,” said Jalan. “Our Food has seen growth of over 100x in its decentralized processing over the past two years, signalling a disruptive trend in mini food processing,” Jalan added.