Box8, one of India’s largest cloud kitchen start-ups has raised US$ 15 million led by eWTP Ecosystem Fund. Existing investors Mayfield and IIFL Seed Ventures fund have also participated in this round.
Started by two IIT graduates Amit Raj and Anshul Gupta, Box8 is a technology first, full stack cloud kitchen company that is known for its all-in-1 meals, desi boxes and more. They own the entire value chain, from procurement of high-quality ingredients to food preparation to the last mile delivery, hence ensuring superior customer experience every time.
Box8 has a presence in 4 cities: Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and NCR delivering over 1 million meals every month from the company-owned 110+ cloud kitchens. Its network of cloud kitchens negates the high rental and operations costs incurred by traditional restaurants and has workflows better suited for delivery.
Box8’s parent company, Poncho Hospitality Pvt. Ltd. also owns and operates the pizza delivery brand – MOJO Pizza. In less than 18 months since its inception, MOJO Pizza has grown to be the largest home-grown pizza delivery chain delivering over 3 lakh pizzas a month. It leverages the existing delivery fleet, technology platform and the network of 110+ cloud kitchens across 4 cities.
eWTP Ecosystem Fund is headed by Youngfu Yu, a founding member of the popular Chinese web browser company UCWeb. He later became a key leader in the Alibaba ecosystem: heading multiple businesses, including Autonavi, Alimama, and Alibaba Entertainment Group.
“We are solving the biggest unsolved problem in food delivery, which is the preparation of food itself. Traditional restaurants simply have a different DNA: their food is all about experience and is meant to be eaten immediately. We are a delivery first company, designing our food keeping in mind that it will be in transit for another 10-15 minutes. Our in-house fleet delivers 100 percent of our orders, this gives us even greater control over the food quality,” says Amit Raj, Co-founder.
“Restaurants are still lagging in technology adoption. Even the biggest brands run on archaic systems with human dependent inventions. We have built our proprietary technology platform grounds up, which forms the backbone of our seamless operations. After all, we are solving two big problems: on-demand preparation of high-quality food and delivering it piping hot within 25 mins. To keep doing this at scale, we would double down on tech,” says Anshul Gupta, Co-founder.
With this additional funding, they plan to rapidly scale the business geographically to 5 more cities with 100 more kitchens in the next 12 months. They are planning to aggressively acquire talent and invest deeper in technology.
