Curefoods raises $62 million to expand its house of food brands

Since commencing operations last year, Curefoods has been on an acquisition spree, building its 'House Of Foods Brands' around the anchor brand — Eat.fit.

Run by Ankit Nagori — who established Curefoods after breaking away from Cure.fit — the company acquires and scales promising food brands on platforms such as Zomato, Swiggy, and more.

Currently, Curefoods houses 20 food brands and operates EatFit, Yumlane, Aligarh House Biryani and Masalabox. In October last year, it acquired added seven food brands, including ChaatStreet, Parathabox & CakeZone.

A week ago, it added five more brands to its portfolio—Juno's Pizza, Cupcake Noggins, ice-cream chain Iceberg, Nomad Pizzas & Jaipur-based White Kitchens.

"Over the next decade, there will be an opportunity to build multiple food brands across cuisines and geographies. With the fund infusion, we plan on expanding across geographies, and meeting newer customer expectations,” said Ankit Nagori, Founder, Curefoods.

Besides the plan to add five more brands to take the total to 25 by mid-2022, Curefoods is planning to build a direct-to-consumer (D2C) platform for all its brands — its own Zomato-like portal to take orders.

With the fresh capital, the cloud-kitchen operator is seeking to double its geographical presence from more than 100 kitchens across 12 cities to 200 kitchens across 20 cities in India. Since the pandemic pulled the table cloth from under plates for the restaurant industry, cloud kitchens have become popular as Indians satiate their taste buds with online food orders.

“The online food delivery industry in India is going through a revolutionary phase. The market has shown huge prospects and attracted heavy investments in recent years," said Nagori.

In October 2021, Rebel Foods, the operator of cloud-kitchen brands such as Faasos, Behrouz Biryani and Ovenstory Pizza, turned unicorn or a startup valued at $1 billion or more, after raising $175 million.

Soon, Biryani By Kilo bagged $35 million in a funding round led by Falcon Edge and SBI. In December, Box8 rebranded to EatClub Brands after securing $40 million from Tiger Global.