Mumbai: Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick is in discussion to pick up a stake in India’s Rebel Foods, a homegrown startup best known for its Faasos brand of rolls and Behrouz Biryani, among others, according to a Bloomberg report.
Kalanick is likely to make the investment from City Storage Systems, the holding company of CloudKitchens — his firm which enables delivery-only restaurants and brands — saving on real estate costs and using a robust logistics network to reach more households.
The investment is part of Rebel’s ongoing $125 million funding round, which is led by US-based technology hedge fund Coatue Management, as Mint first reported on May 19. The round is nearly closed, with investments from existing investor Sequoia Capital as well as new investors, including Goldman Sachs and Go-Jek, the South-East Asian ride-hailing and food delivery unicorn.
Founded in 2011 by Jaydeep Barman and Kallol Banerjee, Faasos rebranded its holding company as Rebel Foods last October, as Rebel owns and operates multiple brands such as biryani-maker Behrouz and pizza-maker Oven Story.
Mint reported earlier that the funds will be used by Rebel to expand its network of kitchens to 500 from the current 200 and expand to Dubai and Indonesia, before expanding to other countries in South-East Asia. It also plans to invest in automation and robotics, which will help reduce manual labour in its kitchens.
Uber’s Kalanick, who was ousted in 2017 from the US ride-hailing leader he co-founded after a series of scandals, is making his first investment in India. Since his dramatic exit, Kalanick has set up an investment fund and charted a strategy to build a kitchen rental service — CloudKitchens, the Bloomberg report said.
