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ZFW Hospitality, which runs dark kitchens and stores ZFW, said it has raised a pre-seed funding of $300,000, or around ₹2 crore, from a clutch of investors including Rahul Jain and Uday Thakker, co-founders of Epigamia yogurt; Ashutosh Valani and Priyank Shah, co-founders of Renee Cosmetics and Beardo; among other.
Other investors include Arjun Vaidya, founder Dr. Vaidya's, and India lead Verlinvest's; NOTO ice cream's founder Varun Sheth; and financial services group Ashika. This takes the company’s total fund raise to $415,000.
Rahul Jain, founder of Epigamia, said, “The model that enables brands to reach more customers in the fastest possible time while solving for customer experiences, high RTOs, and profitability, is well-poised to capitalise on India's $100+ billion D2C opportunity by 2025."
The Delhi-based startup said it plans to use these funds to scale its dark kitchen operations into southern India, accelerate hiring and build a robust tech platform.
The company works with D2C brands to expand and fulfill orders in 30 minutes, two hours, and the same day, using its network of tech-enabled dark stores across India.
The startup, founded in 2020 by food and beverage entrepreneur Madhav Kasturia, said it services about 20,000 orders a month and is on track to achieve 50,000 by the end of this quarter. “The pandemic rapidly accelerated the emerging trend of direct orders for a huge segment of the e-commerce space. We’re building a strong dark store network for D2C brands who will ride this wave. ZFW is on track to grow 10x by the end of 2022," he said.
Arjun Vaidya, founder, Dr. Vaidya’s and India lead for Verlinvest said, “ZFW solves a real problem of quick fulfillment for brands using unutilised spaces. It’s a clever business model that makes sense."
As part of its next phase, ZFW aims to launch 500+ dark stores across all major metro and mini-metro markets by the end of 2022.
According to RedSeer Management Consulting, dark or cloud kitchens are projected to become a $2 billion industry in India by 2024.
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