Faasos, Pune-based online food delivery startup, has raised c series funding round of $6.4 million. As per the record at Registrar of the companies (RoC), this funding round was driven by Lightbox Expansion, Lightbox Ventures II, RuNet South Asia, RB Investments, and Sequoia Capital.
In early December of year 2015, the startup had acquired its first tranche of this series funding of $30 Mn fund. Yet again, it has gained a wholesome of $6.4 Mn in total of six funding rounds.
First company that takes order through tweets
The company is found by Kallol Banerjee and Jaydeep Barman in 2004. Well it was the foremost company that takes orders through tweets. Jaydeep said about the company that,
“Because, we built a full-stack platform to cater to this need (sourcing, producing, delivering the food ourselves), we became the first and probably the only vertically integrated food-tech business in the country at scale. People look at us and realise “foodtech is after all about food and not delivering food””.
Fassos consistently alter its model for better
From the very day Faasos was launched, it made changes in its business model 4 times till now.
- First of all, it began as a QSR chain.
- Then turned in to a dark kitchen model that means no storefronts are available.
- After then, it came to marketplace and finally set in to a multi-brand cloud kitchen model. Under this business model, the startup configures a central kitchen and initiates multiple brands with their own experts.
- At present the application features menu from in-house brands like Oven Story, (for Pizzas), Kettle and Eggs (the tea and snacks bar), and Behrouz (well known for Biryani). The point is to offer assortment of food items at an excellent cost, and as the delivery of food is inhouse, startup acquires the wholesome of margins.
Last Revenues and Rivals
It is concluded that the company has admitted a loss of $3.78 (24.4 Crore) in the fiscal year of 2015 whereas it has admitted a loss of $17.2 Million at the end of march 2016 which is almost four fold of previous one.
On this Jaydeep said that, “FY16 was a breakthrough year in terms of expansion, but the cost of expansion precluded the revenue benefits accrued. However, it has borne fruit in FY17, with the same cost base delivering over 60% growth in revenue.”
Mobile devices are playing a vital role in success of business
As per Jaydeep, an investor in Quinto which is a Pune-based personalized food recommendation app, the startup used to assist almost 15000 customers per day, till November 2016. Out of which 85% were using mobile accounts for ordering and rest of them were using web services. However, 50% of the web orders have been accomplished through mobile devices.
Contender of the company
Faasos has several strong QSR Chains contender, such as Mc Donald’s, Dominos, Pizza Hut, Eatlo, Box8, Frsh, and FreshMenu.
Now, Zomato and Swiggy have also joined the cloud kitchen space and thus these two are also counted as its rivalry.
Moreover, UberEats, subsidiary of Uber, and Areo, Google’s new launched app, is also seeking towards enticing the Indian buyers and it is a great question that how Faasos holds a proper place in such a scenario of tough competition.