Exclusive: Indonesia's Go-Jek gets on board as the latest investor in cloud kitchen Rebel Foods

Rebel Foods, the homegrown cloud kitchens company best known for its Faasos brand, has raised $5 million from Indonesia-born ride hailing unicorn Go-Jek. The infusion is part of the Mumbai-based company's larger ongoing Series D funding round.

Go-Jek made the investment earlier this month through Go Ventures, its venture capital investment arm, according to Rebel Foods’ latest filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. 

By TechCircle’s estimates, the company raised this sum at a valuation of $373-$375 million (Rs 2574.36-Rs 2588.17 crore at current exchange rates).

Responding to queries from TechCircle, Jaydeep Barman, co-founder and CEO of Rebel Foods, said, "This is an investment from Go Ventures and part of the series D round we are raising. The other details of the round are yet to be finalized."

In March this year, the company had raised 110 crore ($15.8 million then ) as part of its Series D round. That tranche was led by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India. At the time, Barman told TechCircle that the tranche was part of a larger $75-100 million round.

The Go-Jek investment comes two months after Mint, citing unnamed sources, reported that the Indonesia-based ride hailing player was looking to invest in Rebel Foods. The report also added that US-based hedge fund Coatue Management may invest and end up leading the Series D round.

Rebel Foods

Earlier known as Faasos Food Services Pvt. Ltd, the company, which was founded in 2010, rebranded its parent entity to Rebel Foods Pvt. Ltd in 2018 to distinguish its wraps-and-meals brand Faasos as a separate brand from its other brands Behrouz Biryani and Oven Story.

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 at the Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow and INSEAD in France respectively.

Also Read: There’s a lot cooking in cloud kitchens -- does Rebel Foods have the right recipe?

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

In FY 17-18, The company managed to grow its revenues by 67% while narrowing its losses for the second straight year. Net sales jumped to Rs 149 crore in 2017-18 from Rs 89 crore in the previous year. Net losses shrank to Rs 74 crore from Rs 82 crore.

While Faasos might be one of the earliest entrants in the cloud kitchen, the competition is heating up in the space as other well funded players like Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats, Ola and more recently Oyo are also training their guns on the market.