Delhi-based shared kitchen startup Kitchens Centre has raised an undisclosed Pre Series A from US-based Village Global. The company raised a seed round of US$ 500,000 in April this year from AngelList India.
Village Global is an early-stage venture capital firm backed by the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Disney’s Bob Iger and more.
Founded in 2019 by Lakshay Jain, Kitchens Centre is a shared kitchen startup that provides infrastructure and technology solutions and more, for online food and FMCG brands. With the approach of building ready to move-in-kitchens, the brand offers key benefits for brand partners with the fully-fitted kitchen making it easier for brands to launch operations and/ or penetrate the market faster.
Lakshay Jain, Founder, Kitchens Centre says, “Kitchens Centres is providing a dedicated and sustainable solution for businesses to grow and produce a high order volume and sales. With the obvious benefit being the reduction of cost, we also aim to create an incubated ecosystem with integrated tech solutions, supply chain, logistics support and platform aggregation. Moreover with the pandemic still very much prevalent, the food delivery business is prospering and gaining momentum in the food services industry.”
The brand started operations with two locations in Delhi and over the course of 1 year have scaled up to 35+ locations across 15 cities pan India. The company has a network of 200+ kitchen units presently and works with over 50 F&B brands like Choko La, Mamagoto, Biryani Blues, Sleepy Owl, Cross Border Kitchen, Masala story – Punjabi by nature, Fat Lulu’s, Nirula’s, Maalgaadi by Dhaba Estd 1986 and more. Furthermore, the company is planning to expand further by adding more than 90+ new locations and 550 units over the next one year. Currently, the startup is managing 100,000 sq.ft space with 50+ team members. This number is bound to grow rapidly as they are actively recruiting team members across the board.
Furthermore Eric Torenberg, Co-Founder, Village Global, adds “Kitchens Centre data-driven approach to property acquisition and sales management ensures maximisation of occupancy and unit economics. They consider various idiosyncratic factors such as cuisine share/gap, composition of user cohorts & associated AOV etc to target a specific location within a city. India is one of the largest and fastest growing F&B consumption markets and Kitchens Centre is rightly placed to address a market gap. It is enabling restaurants, food entrepreneurs as well as FMCG brands to take advantage of the boom in delivery/ logistics and achieve higher ROI – minimal capital outlay and faster go-to-market. We see significant investment opportunities in this ecosystem.”
As food delivery is expected to outpace dining/ at-restaurant sales in the next 9-12 months, Kitchens Centre is aspiring to partner with many more restaurants and food-tech startups to accelerate their growth story.
This concept is finding a lot of traction in the global markets as well – more recently, Virtual Kitchen Co. (USA), Karma Kitchen (UK) and Zuul (USA) have raised significant growth capital.
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