EGK Foods, a Startup India-registered food processing organisation raised pre-seed funding of USD 300k from Pradyumna Kokil.
The brainchild of 'OnionKnight' Satyajit Roy, the company focusses primarily on onions and its by-products, along with onion processing.
"We were lucky enough to get investors involved who believed in the product and the company much before we had built it. In time we hope to attract FDI as per guidance by the Ministry of Food Processing of India (MoFPI) who we hope to work with in the near term as India positions itself to be the Food Bowl of the world," said Roy.
The company CEO also stated that on the backend, EGK Foods is setting up a bigger factory and backward integrating with farmers to assure them guaranteed buyback of goods produced at a fair price irrespective of market fluctuations.
EGK is also going through various market channels including wholesale, a small retail presence, e-commerce, modern retail. With funding, the distribution network will be accelerated. EGK Foods Pvt. Ltd. does not hold any patents although the process with which they fry and package the onions is proprietary. The company is looking to build out the infrastructure to supply the immense demand that exists for the product.
There is immense growth potential in this market and being the first movers, EGK Foods has an advantage to capture the entire market. With upgraded infrastructure, wider distribution network and more retail/ wholesale presence, the company will be able to improve the margins.
"I am from Nasik and every year we are in the news for reasons relating to the plight of the farmers. I thought instead of complaining I should become a part of the solution. And once we heard Satyajit speak about the business we knew that we could really become big and solve the crisis that the farmers face. Hence we invested in this venture," said the investor, Pradyumna Kokil.
Currently, EGK sells 30 metric tonnes of their finished product monthly which translates to about 150 Metric Tonnes of raw onions which are being processed every month. With the factory upgrade, production capacity will be close to 100 Metric Tonnes per month and there are plans to open up the domestic as well as international markets where the company has seen tremendous demand.
EGK aims to create a positive impact in the society through onion processing by linking the farmers to the end users and helping in avoiding the 25 percent annual onion wastage (approximately 5 tons). Mainly catering to HORECA (currently USD 419.68 Billion) and the food and retail segment (currently USD 39.71 Billion) poised to grow at 16.1 percent and 11percent CAGR respectively.
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