Holachef, a food-tech portal that works with masterchefs to deliver innovative cuisines to the consumer’s doorstep, is in the final stage of raising $12-15 million from a clutch of new and existing investors.
It has already raised Series-A funding of ₹20 crore led by Kalaari Capital and India Quotient.
The Mumbai-based start-up plans to use the funds to consolidate its position in the existing markets instead of going on an expansion spree.
At present, Holachef delivers food in Mumbai and Pune only.
Saurabh Saxena, Founder, Holachef, said: “We are not planning to go on a massive expansion. We will strengthen our position in Mumbai initially. We just want to enter three more markets — Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru in the next year. We want to solve the problem of food fatigue and give our customers a new menu everyday.”
Soon after the app became popular, Holachef hired a few well-known chefs to provide standardised service in menu, packaging and delivery.
The start-up has built one central kitchen each in Mumbai and Pune from where it services its customers.
The start-up is at present working closely with 170 chefs on the platform and 20 permanent chefs in the central kitchen.
Despite the challenges entailing the food delivery segment in India, where several companies have shut and others facing operational issues, Saxena is upbeat about Holachef.
“We have now come a long way and are doing 3,000 orders a day and our kitchen has the capacity to make 18,000 meals per day,” Saxena said, adding that it is betting big on technology to improve supply chain back-end automation in predicting demand, planning deliveries better and reduce wastage of food.