 "food delivery")
Kolkata-based intercity cooked food delivery startup, tastes2plate.com, is close to raising Rs 30-40 crore in Series A venture funding, aiming at unlocking exponential growth in the online food delivery market, which holds the potential to reach USD 3-5 billion within the next few years, an official said.
Led by IT professional Gyan Srivastava, the bootstrapped startup took over three years to stabilize its business model through extensive innovation in packaging and logistics.
This allowed the company to become the lowest-cost player in the industry, he said.
"We are very close to raising Rs 30-40 crore in Series A funding," said Srivastava, CEO of tastes2plate (T2P) owned by Charabuni Services.
The funds will be primarily used for capacity building in marketing, information technology, and logistics infrastructure, he said.
"The funding will help us achieve 30-40 per cent month-on-month growth in the number of deliveries compared to our current volume.
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"While the total online food delivery business is USD 19.6 billion with a CAGR of 20 per cent, the intercity delivery segment is still nascent but growing exponentially. Currently, we average over 35,000 deliveries per month," Srivastava said.
Picked food is packed from one city and shipped to another, ensuring freshness upon delivery within 12 to 24 hours, the official explained.
Regarding competition, Srivastava claimed, "Currently, one other app operates in this domain, but another dominant online food delivery app is not consistently active in the market. We are the only company focused purely on intercity food delivery."
He claimed that tastes2plate, now operating in about 20 major cities, offers the cheapest overall food delivery cost to customers.
"This was possible only through innovative packaging that meets Indian Institute of Packaging standards," Srivastava stated.
Customers pay an average of Rs 120 per kg plus packaging for orders booked through T2P platform restaurants, and Rs 210 a kg (including packaging) for individually tailored deliveries.
Interestingly, there is also a growing demand for delivering home-cooked food to loved ones in other cities, he noted.
"Apart from the increasing trend of ordering delicacies from other cities, trial deliveries of home-cooked food for relatives and friends have seen good traction. This is why we are launching this service as a full-fledged offering," Srivastava said.
Currently, it is offering its services in cities such as Kolkata, Patna, Lucknow, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Jaipur, Amritsar, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kochi and Goa.
The company plan is to extend the service in Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kanpur, Ludhiana and Guwahati in the next 30 to 45 days.
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