Faasos parent Rebel Foods secures first tranche of Series D round

Rebel Foods, an internet kitchen platform which owns and operates a number of brands including Faasos and Behrouz Biryani, has raised Rs 110 crore ($15.8 million at current exchange rates) as part of a larger Series D round of funding led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India. 

Lightbox Ventures and Evolvence India Fund also participated in this round, filings with the Registrar of Companies show.

Rebel Foods co-founder and chief executive Jaydeep Barman told TechCircle that the investment constituted a tranche of a larger round of $75-100 million. While only existing investors have contributed to the current tranche, subsequent tranches will see participation from new investors, Barman added without naming them.

Lightbox founding partner Sandeep Murthy had told TechCircle last month that Rebel Foods was setting up shop in Dubai and required additional capital to fund its expansion to other geographies.

Sequoia Capital led the Series D tranche by investing a total of Rs 70.45 crore through its SCI Investments VI fund and Sequoia Capital India Trust while VC firm Lightbox put in Rs 33.36 crore via Lightbox Expansion Fund and Lightbox Ventures II, the filings show.

Dubai-based alternative investment firm Evolvence India Fund contributed Rs 7.12 crore to the round.

Lightbox will now hold 18.8% stake in Rebel Foods while Sequoia will own 7.44% and Evolvence 2.14%.

The latest fundraise comes months after the Pune-based company had raised Rs 30 crore ($4.2 million) from venture debt firm Alteria Capital.

This deal was struck as part of a $30 million investment that Rebel Foods had received in October, Barman had told TechCircle earlier. 

A number of marquee venture capital funds including Russia’s Sistema Asia Fund Advisors, Evolvence India Fund, Lightbox, Sequoia Capital and Russian investment firm Ru-Net had participated in that round.

Earlier known as Faasos Food Services Pvt. Ltd, the company rebranded its parent entity to Rebel Foods Pvt. Ltd in 2018 to distinguish its wraps-and-meals brand Faasos as a separate brand. It competes with the likes of FreshMenu and Box8. 

Rebel Foods, which has gradually pivoted from a quick service restaurant (QSR) chain to a cloud kitchen model, was founded by Barman in 2004 with Kallol Banerjee. Both Barman and Kallol are engineers and studied management at the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow and INSEAD business school in France, respectively.

Since the pivot, the company has launched several brands under different categories such as biryani, meals, pizza and dessert. It runs about 1,100 individual internet restaurants (with 176 kitchens) across 15 Indian cities. A cloud kitchen accepts only online orders and offers no dine-in facility.

The company managed to grow its revenue by 67% in the financial year 2017-18 while narrowing its loss for the second straight year. Net sales of Rebel Foods jumped to Rs 149 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 89 crore in the previous year. Net loss shrank to Rs 74 crore from Rs 82 crore.