Food brand aggregator Big Bang Food Tech (BBFT) has raised ₹4.8 crores in seed funding led by Artha Venture Fund. Angel investors such as Harsh Jain, Ashneer Grover, Chitra Radhakrishnan, Lakshmi Alagappan, Anand Kumar, and Nikhil Aggarwal also participated in the round.
BBFT is a food sector startup with the objective of acquiring and scaling legendary food brands that have a proven Product-Market Fit (PMF).
BBFT has made its first acquisition -- the famous Kathi roll brand ‘34 Chowringhee Lane’, started in 2004 and 40 outlets nationwide. It sells via high street retail as well as online sales channels. As a classic roll-up model, the ‘house of food brands’ will acquire three more legacy brands by 2022-23 and, set them up for scale-up, generating direct and indirect jobs across the country.
BBFT is being led by a four-member founding team -- Abhimanyu Singh Rana (IITD), Sonia Sinha (ISB, ex-Google), Manu Mohindra (IHM, ex-Taj), and Sonia Mohindra (IHM, ex-ITC). The team has more than 100 years of cumulative experience in the F&B segment, having set supply chains and products for over 1600 brands including Barista, Wendy’s, and The Republic of Chicken.
“This is an exciting and challenging opportunity to scale brands with proven demand, which have limited presence with a new vision, skill, and scale. The first step is to focus on operations, back-end processes, and logistics to ensure a smooth supply chain and build the reach of the brands. Data predicts the food market will grow from US$ 58 billion/annum to US$ 88 billion/annum by 2025, and much of this growth will come from the VFM QSR sector," says Abhimanyu Singh Rana, Co-founder.
"BBFT strives to celebrate and preserve India’s diverse food culture, by taking many local successes and heroes to the national scale, by enabling brands to scale up efficiently, bringing down CapEx and OpEx while improving product quality and margins," it said in a statement.
BBFT said it will lean on food technology and automation to unlock efficiencies and partner with FinTech players to increase capital efficiency across business verticals.
