#StartupNews Rebel Foods: kitchens on cloud 9 Origin: Mum | Idea factory
#StartupNews
Rebel Foods: kitchens on cloud 9
Origin: Mumbai
Valuation: $1.4 billion
Business model: dark restaurant
Rebel Foods is the youngest unicorn on the Indian market. Recently, the startup has attracted $175 million investments and gained a unicorn status. Currently, the company is valued at $1,4 billion. Let’s see how the chain of ‘cloud kitchens’ hit the jackpot.
Idea
Rebel Foods manages the biggest number of so called ‘Internet kitchens’ in 10 countries. More than 45 brands like Wendy’s and Mad Over Donuts own the company. The idea of ‘dark kitchens’ is to make food service more cost-effective. Creating and maintaining a restaurant is really expensive because at the end of the day this is a property.
How it was created
Jaydeep Barman used to work as a consultant for McKinsey. Once he realized that despite the popularity of Indian food, there was still no world brand for cooking it. So, Jaydeep came up with an idea of ‘dark kitchens’ that were supposed to centrally serve restaurants. In June 2019, Rebel Foods raised $125 million investments from Coatue Management and Goldman Sachs. A month later, it became the largest Internet restaurant in the world.
Advantages
The concept of ‘dark kitchens’ allows partner restaurants and brands to shift from costly shops to affordable online systems. They can optimize their business focusing only on making products.
Many investors state that a model of ‘cloud kitchens’ plays a key role when entering a larger market of product suppliers, restaurants, and brands. Now companies don’t have to build 5 objects for managing 5 restaurants. Rebel Foods enables them to have only one kitchen with the help of technologies.
Besides, mono brand companies are losing investors’ interest. They can’t create a single profitable economy managing one brand. Scaling one single brand over the world requires substantially more capital investments. Whereas brands constituting part of a larger portfolio have controlled and fixed costs.
Investments
Evidently, their idea raises a bunch of funds. Tiger Global, SoftBank, Sequoia and Temasek are actively investing in the startup and even doubling their bets.
Thanks to the generous investments, Rebel Foods’ has lately become a unicorn, achieving worth of $1,4 billion. Their current annual income amounts to $150 million.
Plans
The startup is intended to use fresh tools for its international expansion and exploring consumers’ possibilities. Piyush Kakkad — Rebel Foods’ head — plans to become the public company. Experts forecast the startup to reach $35 billion by 2030.
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